Day 31

Inspiration Point

We decided to take another ranger-led hike to Inspiration Point this morning because all our previous ranger-involved activities were quite informative. This one, however, started too early. We had to be at Jenny Lake at 8:30 a.m., so we had to wake up really early. Andy woke me up at 7:45 and we left at 8:02. It was about 20 miles to the lake. We didn’t know if we were going to make it. We traveled at light speed to catch the boat—the program consists of getting on the boat to go across Jenny Lake. This drops you at the trailhead for Inspiration Point and Cascade Canyon. We got there at 8:31, following the other speeders.

Eric Best was our “naturalist interpreter” today. This was a college kid who reminded me of Timothy Busfield in Field of Dreams who kept pushing them to sell the farm. He was a nice guy but I couldn’t help associating that image with him.

We started talking to this older couple from Annapolis who were a bit weary about hiking the one mile trail and 400 feet elevation to the point. It wasn’t a flat trail, but at the rate we were going a turtle could have beat us up there.

Eric had some interesting things to share with us, for instance, the American Dipper. The sparrow-sized bird we saw yesterday in Death Canyon dipping in and out of the fast-flowing water looking for food. We saw it as we perched ourselves next to a waterfall. I’ve never seen a bird dive in the water like this one was doing.

Eric had some interesting little facts to share with us, but he talked to us as if we were children. He would ask questions like; “What’s going to happen if everyone fed the cute little bears?” or “What’s going to happen if we cut down the trees?”—the type of questions no one would reply to because everyone knows the answer is obvious. Thankfully, there was this kid who answered all the questions; he was hyper and was running around all over the place.

We spotted a pika on a rock field, the kid chased it all over the place. On top of Eric’s condescending questions at the conclusion of each stop, which was about every hundred yards, he had these readings. Quaint selections from works ranging from Muir to Thoreau to Dr. Suess. These readings had to go—Eric had to go—no, we had to go, and we did just that. We got the hell out of there.

Cascade Canyon

Made it up to Inspiration Point and we were able to look down upon Eric and the group taking another rest. Once we checked out Inspiration Point, it was about 10:30 and we continued on into Cascade Canyon.

This canyon was a bit more popular than Death Canyon (who would have guessed?). The Cascade Creek flowed at the bottom of the canyon, fed by high mountain lakes that cannot be seen from this elevation. This canyon is surrounded by the biggies: Teewinot Mountain, Mount Owen, and Grand Teton which is tucked back in there, and Mount St. John on the other side.

Grand Teton is the highest peak in the park at 13,770 feet. Along the way we saw many pikas carrying branches that were two or three times their size. In fact, this is the easiest way to spot a pika, just look for moving branches or moving leaves around the rocks. Saw another animal which we figured was a muskrat. No moose or bear today.

The glaciers on top of the mountains created streams that flow down the steep slopes into the Cascade Creek. We walked about three miles into the canyon then turned back. All the kids we passed asked if we’d seen any bears, I don’t know what they were going to do when they found a bear, but they were sure anxious to see one.

Clouds were beginning to come in and a clap of thunder could be heard on the west side of the range. We decided to take the boat back, and when we arrived there was a long line. We went on the third boat. It was funny though, there was a scuffle between two women and a couple. These two women had apparently walked out onto the dock to look at the lake. When the boat came these three people started bitchin’ that they were cutting in line. The couple who confronted the two women were southern and looked like the typical tourists, dressed in flashy clothes that didn’t fit, and a lot of camera equipment hanging off the shoulder. Anyway, this guy, who reminded me of Willie Nelson, tells the boat driver not to let the two ladies on and the two ladies started yelling back, telling them they didn’t cut in line. All the while, I couldn’t believe this was happening.

The guy made it a point of letting everyone in line know that they cut in line. Obviously, the two women didn’t make the boat and as we were pulling out this guy stood up and waved to the two ladies yelling, “Adios ladies!” Some of the other passengers joined in as well. I still couldn’t believe this guy, but by now many people in the boat were laughing along with him which, to some degree, was even more frightening. There were some foreigners in the boat as well and I didn’t want to think about the stereotypes this couple were enforcing about “those crude Americans.”

Jackson

We were back on the other side of Jenny Lake around 2:30 p.m. We went back to camp and decided to take showers at the public showers in Colter Bay since it was sprinkling and may possibly rain this afternoon. This was the first shower since Seattle, seven days ago. There was so much dirt on the back of my legs that it acted as an effective sunblock. We planned to go into Jackson tonight, which is about 12 miles below Moose Village. Andy did a load of laundry and we got cleaned up and rested.

We got into Jackson around 5:30 and hoped to see a movie and get dinner somewhere. This town is like a northern version of Santa Fe. All the sidewalks are the old style boardwalks and there is a large center square with huge archways made of antlers at each entrance. The stores were many of the catalog-type places like an L.L. Bean store, J. Crew store and others.

I ducked into Jackson Drug and said hello for my friend Laurie, who did her pharmacy internship here and worked there for two summers. We walked around looking for something to eat, but were having a hard time finding something. We settled on this family type restaurant—it was cheap and we stuffed ourselves. We went to a bookstore and got ice cream from these people who had moved here from some middle eastern country. There are a lot of bikers in this town and a huge cowboy/country bar. The country music blared out of the doors of this place. We got back to camp around 8:30 and relaxed for a bit before going to sleep. Tomorrow was a driving day.