July 3rd-6th – Grand Teton National Park.

July 3rd – 6th
Grand Teton National Park
Jackson, Wyoming

Yellowstone was way to busy. It’s beautiful, but so crowded that it can’t be enjoyed fully.  After fighting the crowds to see the Grand Prismatic spring we left the park.

Now we get to what becomes the most stressful part of adventuring on a budget. We love to use freecampstites.net to find free camping. It’s not a perfect site. Sometimes the GPS coordinates are way off, it’s easy to get lost, and almost always there is no reception to look up another site or confer with the GPS. So far we have lucked out. With a little more driving around or being in a National Forest you can pretty much camp anywhere with in reason, we have always been able to find a free place to camp. Well, after leaving Yellowstone we had a place already looked up. However, we didn’t know until we tried to find our site, that a recent forest fire closed the place we wanted to camp down. Shoot! And with no reception, we couldn’t look up another place. After asking a lady out walking her dog, she pointed us to another site. Great! Well, when we got there it was full to the brim. Shoot! So, we kept driving South towards Jackson. We end up driving to the Tetons, make dinner on the side of the road, and keep driving. With the sun setting and Jackson still a few miles off, we figured this was gonna be our first night sleeping in the car. After a night of mosquitos, it was not something we really didn’t want to do. We finally make it to Jackson around 8:30 PM. Jackson is one of the nicest Mountain towns we have ever been in. Which means, just about every parking lot we pulled into had no overnight parking signs up. They really don’t want poor people in their town. Shoot! Luckily, at around 9 PM, Laura gets enough reception to look up another campsite. There is one just outside of town. We go for it, not really knowing what we’re getting into. We go up this winding hill in the dark and wouldn’t you know it, at the top of the hill is a whole field of adventure vehicles and trucks. And when we turn around. WOW!! The Tetons are right across the valley with the last of the sunlight setting behind them. I think this place will do for sleeping for the next couple of days.  Once again we lucked out with free camping.

The Tetons are amazing. Easily our most favorite place yet. It’s not nearly as big of a park as Yellowstone and the crowds seem so much more laid back. The Visitor Center we stopped in was one of the nicest we’ve seen yet. We did an easy day hike that took us up to a beautiful lake nestled below the tallest peak. The park has bike lanes with people using them. The roads have wide shoulders, unlike Yellowstone, where you are constantly white knuckling the steering wheel. Then, of course, the mountain vistas are simply amazing. They just shoot up out of this flat valley and tower over the land. It’s what you imagine a mountain should look like.

Funny Story! We had just had a nice lunch beside the lake when Camrin notices one of her silver hoop earrings is missing. Laura looks through her photos and sure enough, it was on earlier in the hike. We scour the ground where we had lunch, but nothing. We decide to hike back the way we came and keep a look out. That’s when Laura remembered something important. Early into the hike up, we stopped so Camrin could look at some wild flowers. She had a bug fly in her face and when she smacked at it the bug went flying into the bushes with a big thud. Laura even remarked, “that was a big bug!” Well, what if that wasn’t a bug, but Camrin’s earring. Then Camrin, being the plant nerd she is, said: “I know exactly which flower that was and where it is.” So, we hike back down to those same bushes and within seconds we find the earring. Team work makes the dream work!!

After our day in the Park, we went back to the site we found late last night. Then something amazing happened. We made friends with other travelers. It just starts by striking up a conversation with a neighbor or asking them a question. There were two sisters parked next to us. They started it all by asking about starting a fire. From there we met another young lady, which led to meeting a rock climber guy, which led to meeting another adventurer guy. We all watched the sunset over the Tetons from an amazing lookout and we were even able to see some fireworks way out in the distance by a ski resort. We made a fire, swapped travel stories, got to know one another and stayed up into the wee hours of the night. It was magic.

The next day was supposed to be a day of rest and blog catch up, but with new friends to hang out with, that didn’t really happen. Oh well. Another sunset over the Tetons.

After the third night, we reluctantly packed up, said our goodbyes to our new friends, and made our way back through Yellowstone. The Tetons were amazing, we will definitely be going back someday.