The day started out innocuously enough. I went paddleboarding, something I was dying to do since we lugged my gigantic paddleboard all the way from Kansas. While inside the RV, the paddleboard covers the bathroom, main bed and seating area making it both impossible for someone to use the bathroom and a pain to climb over in other to use the dining table. We have to take it out of the RV every time we park it for the night. It is a pain to transport.
But, I said to myself “if I leave it and we have tons of opportunity to use it, I will kick myself” so I convinced Dennis to lug my 10.5 ft behemoth of a paddleboard on the trip. Well, here was my shot, at the gorgeous Grand Teton’s Jackson Lake.
Or kind of. Dennis’ Prius doesn’t have a roof rack. So, he rigged up some foam pads, proudly pulled out some bungee ratchet cables from the bowels of the RV and solidly tied it down to the Prius. Lucas and I donned our life jackets, water shoes and grabbed the paddle. Dennis then spent 10 minutes explaining to Lucas and I how it all lashed back together so we could put it back up after paddling.
After that, we were on our way to the inlet ramp accessible on the other side of our campsite. We quickly parked (Thank you, Prius, for fitting into any slot!) and then proceeded to tug on the cords to release the paddleboard. And tugged, and tugged. Lucas sighed and got out of the car to get it off, and tugged and tugged. The darned things would not release the paddleboard. We spent a good 10 minutes trying to get the cords to release to no avail. I finally decided to push the foams out from under the paddleboard and then to slide it out from its holdings in the most awkward way possible. But it was loose!
And it was glorious. I mean, hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever paddleboarded in.
I didn’t stay long because Lucas was waiting for me on the shore to paddleboard and I reluctantly turned back around after a short while. There was no wind and small waves.
I get back and while I’m pulling in to let Lucas take the paddleboard he tells me, deadpan, “I’m not paddleboarding”. Surprised, I get off the paddleboard in the water so I could hold it steady and asked him why not.
“There’s leeches in the water” – he says. And I proceed to not only get out of the water in record speed but to also haul the paddleboard under one arm while doing it. How did I do it? I have no idea. One minute, I’m standing in the water and the next, I’m in the shore, after unceremoniously shoving the paddleboard at my son, checking my feet and legs for leeches.
“I found leeches in my feet” -says an unhelpful young girl from across the beach, while watching me check myself in panic, with what looked like glee.
My check didn’t reveal any leeches, so I started doubting the sanity of both my poor kid and the young girl across the way. In any case, we needed to get back to the campsite.
I wrestled the paddleboard back and walked to the Prius to position it back on the roof before tightening it back down. But again, the darned ratchet cables wouldn’t work! Exasperated, I told Lucas we would hold it in place with our hands and I would drive slow, and that’s what we did. We were those crazy people you pass on the road trying to hold a mattress on the roof of their car with their bare hands. Except, we did have legit cables but no way of using them. Just hands, and prayers. And hope that we didn’t run into a Ranger.
After we got back, I used my 1/2 bar signal (which most of the time was zero bars) to Google leeches in Grand Teton. And yes. There are indeed leeches in the lakes. So, there is that. And also, eeew. I kept checking my feet to see if I had missed any. Most of the blogs I read that talked about the leeches were very low key about it but I’m not fond of the idea of a leech on me or my family, so I will stay away from the gorgeous but “leechy” waters in Grand Teton.
Our next adventure in Grand Teton included a hike planned by Dennis at a place called Two Oceans inside the park. We pulled into the hard to find, gravel-road parking, made note of only two other cards in the parking lot and set off for our adventure. The first part went off without a hitch.
The hike first went up a small hill with views of the Grand Tetons and then you could choose to turn back or try tp go around one of two gorgeous lakes. And that’s when things got interesting.
The deeper we went into the backcountry, the less groomed the paths were. So, we went from a fully groomed path to paths with high wildflowers, bushes and other greenery brushing us on both sides.
Which was fine, really, if you don’t think too much about ticks or other things getting on you. At some point, one of the wildflowers promptly dropped a bunch of thorns on the inside of my boot that felt like a bee was stinging me in there and caused me to say some choice words in Spanish, while hopping around and trying to yank my boot off. My family crowded around me, confused and worried about the rattlesnake that for sure had gotten into my boot.
When I found the thorns, I sheepishly took them out and put my boot back on. Nothing to look at here folks, keep moving along.
At this point, we had been hiking for 2 1/2 hours (about 5 miles) and everyone was getting tired. While on a water and snack break, I had the realization that we had been terribly ambitious and that we were only halfway done with the hike. Up until now, we’d only done 4 mile hikes (about 2 hours) which were the perfect combo of difficult and challenging. But, here, we were 5 miles in, already tired, with grumpy kids and had a ton of hiking left to do. Dennis and I took the kid’s packs to make it easier on them as we hiked around the lake and back to our car.
Then a worse realization hit me.
See, we had seen quite a lot of manure. Apparently, this trail is used for horseback tours and so the trail had a lot of horse manure, which was easily identifiable by the shape and contents (hay).
But along the horse manure, there were signs of other types of scat. Grizzly bear scat. Now, I’m no expert on scat of any kind, but this one looked fresh. And big. Really big.
So now, Dennis and I start getting paranoid about running into a Grizzly bear on a trail. So we took our usual spots, Dennis in the front, with the bear spray in his hand, bear whistle in his mouth to avoid surprising a bear and me in the back of the group, just looking around.
The boys were also starting to lag and so I decided to pull out my phone and play the Hamilton musical on Spotify. Since I had downloaded it before and it didn’t need cell signal, it worked right away. So, the boys were entertained and singing along while I tried to keep up.
At some point during the last mile, I developed 3 blisters in my foot and I tried to avoid making them worse. The irony didn’t escape me that I looked like the injured specimen that bears and wolves like to take down just when we saw evidence of a one hobbling along with something clearly wrong with it.
At last, lo and behold, we got to the Prius and went to the RV for the evening. I took off my boots and beheld my feet. Clearly, given how sensitive my feet are, I’m not going to set any thru hike records any time soon. But all in all, a beautiful and rewarding day in Grand Teton.
Wao i love your stories! Thank you for sharing