Teton National Park- Day 6

Ahhh… the Tetons. They are quite striking when we were driving up and saw them for the first time. They are a huge mountain range with Grand Teton at the center at over 13,000 feet tall. The drive through the Bridger National Forest was beautiful, with lots of pine trees, rolling hills, and the Snake River running through it. We finally arrived at our campsite at 8pm, a long but uneventful day of driving. The set-up of our campsite was stressful, the site seemed a little small for what we have but we made it finally and then had a quick dinner and off to bed.

Wednesday morning we slept in and leisurely got ready for a hike around Jenny Lake. We arrived at Jenny Lake and went straight to the visitor's center. After that we started our hike. The lake is just beautiful and very large, blue- green in color with pine trees all the way to the shoreline. The hike took us around the lake on a dirt trail with tons of foliage, pine trees, and quaking aspen (Auntie Donna's favorite tree!) surrounding us. Shortly into our hike I heard Tim say "Kamisha did you see that?" He was behind me with Leah so I looked to my right and in the forest 5 feet from me I saw a very large mule deer looking right at me and running toward me. I panicked. I grabbed the kids, stood still, and screamed as loud as I could (thanks Mom, now I am a screamer too!). I scared the deer and off he went! We continued on for another 2 miles or so until we finally reached the end of our hike at Hidden Falls. It is a gorgeous waterfall in the Teton Mountain. It is very large and running fast. We had lunch by the waterfall and then we continued back down to the boating dock and took the boat back to the other side of the lake. The kids really enjoyed the boat ride and it was nice to not have to hike a couple of miles back. After that it was back in the car and off to Jackson Lodge which is on Jackson Lake. We went to Lunch Tree Hill where Rockefeller first fell in love with the Tetons and decided to buy them to make them a National Park. The Lodge is nice with huge windows looking out at the lake. We took a couple of pictures and then it was back to camp. On the road to our campground, there were tons of Bison on both side of the road and also crossing the road in front of us and behind us. There were tons of them. We made it back and we will relax a little and take in some ranger programs at our campground tonight. It is much cooler here, temps in the low 70's and it was cool last night. Felt more like camping with the cooler temps and no hook ups... I love roughing it a bit more but Tim, might disagree :)