days 4-6 Tetons

June 6 – Tuesday – Travel up to Grand Tetons – Day 4

Lotsa miles.  Southern Wyoming isn’t that glorious, really. It’s sparse, with lots of antelope.

Whereas the entire western half of Colorado is awesome, Wyoming’s awesome is far more concentrated, with lots of not–awesome mixed in between.  Actually, I’m being too harsh. Most of the roads follow rivers, and these rivers (at least, Wind River, which rolls through the Shoshone Indian Reservation) just tend to be farther from the mountains than I’d like. We took 287 almost entirely from Loveland, CO to the Tetons.  287 was made to connect TX money with places of interest, I believe.  It connects Houston and Dallas with other places which are far more glorious than they…. The whole time you’re on it, you want to be somewhere else.  When you get on it in Decatur, you want to be in Amarillo.  Once you get to Amarillo, you’re thinking about Raton, NM, and then Denver, CO. After Denver, you’re thinking Tetons/Yellowstone.  And crazy enough, 287, yes, the same 287 that crosses 45 just south of Ennis will take you all the way to Yellowstone. Hell, it’s the main drag through the park itself. Today I saw a guy riding southbound on it in a UTV.

Back to the fun stuff……. The Tetons, unlike most of 287, are awesome in spades. Just fantastic country, overrun with critters and views.

Once we got camp setup, we took a brief tour of the area to orient ourselves. Appx ¼ mile from my camper sits a rock beach where you can swim, if you’re bold enough, the eastern side of Lake Jackson. On the western side, and I mean IMMEDIATELY on the western side, sits the mountain range that made the park famous. Lake Jackson is at 6772 feet of elevation (ASL).  Some of the Teton range are well over 13,000’. That means the mountains you’re looking at (oh, and did I mention they still have A LOT of snow on them?) are well over a mile higher than the lake itself.  The combination of high mountain lake, with a snow-covered mountain range in the backdrop just makes you sit, and after a series of minutes searching for something better…… just say “wow”, cause that’s all you can do. Watching a storm blow over, putting new snow on top while you watch snowmelt into a river out the bottom is like getting to watch God himself shuffle cards in a game for which you don’t understand all the rules.

me, foxy woman, kid skipping rocks, God shuffling nature in background

Returning to camp for dinner, we met our immediate neighbor, Tom.  Tom lives partly in Idaho and partly in California.  Tom has a nice Ranger bass boat, so I asked him if he’d been doing any good (this is how total strangers who both fish introduce themselves).  Fishermen don’t have to know each other at all to strike up a discussion.  They just say “been doin’ any good?”.   Tom said he’d thrown back about 60 trout that morning.  Sixty. Trout.  Upon my calling him a liar, Tom busted out his cell phone and showed me pictures of elk, moose, mule deer, antelope, bass, trout and just about every other thing that tastes good west of the Mississippi.  Including, but not limited to, a helluvalot of lake trout….

Tom on right, Travis holding dinner

When I grow up, I definitely want to be a Tom, but I feel grossly behind schedule. I mentioned that if he wanted to keep a couple of those, we’d be glad to eat them. Tom returned about 4 hours later, having hit 100 trout fish for the day, with 9 huge lake trout for the table. Then he filleted them for us, showed us where he had been catching them, on what, and how to work them.  To top it all off he gave us some of his lures, some rosemary from his garden for the trout, and a recipe for cooking them. No sh%t.  Men don’t do this. Tom does.  Attaboy sir.  Tom used to run an outdoors store called “Glory Hole Outdoors” in California, specializing in big bass.

June 7  - Day 5 – Amanda’s birthday

Day started with a brief birthday celebration over leftovers, during which Deanna delivered a book light she’d procured in TX. Momma loves her girl and got her exactly what she wanted.

lillipad flower Travis gave Amanda for birthday

Kids and I took the canoe out on Lake Jackson.  The area we fished was about a 20-30 minute paddle from the boat launch.  Upon arrival, it started raining.  Of course, we’d all laid out our fishing clothes (including raingear) the night before, and promptly left rain gear in the camper….  So we beached the boat and sat out a 30 minute rainstorm under a big spruce tree.  Once it stopped raining, we relaunched and started back up the lake.  About halfway up the next section of lake, we saw a black bear come out of the woods and head out to a small-ish island out in the lake. A little drama came when we realized that the bear in question had moved from the same patch of woods that we’d been sitting in only minutes before. Aye-caramba! 

We fished hard til about 10 am and headed back. We saw a lot of trout, but never caught one. I did catch a big “sucker” fish, that was bright orange.

Once we got back to camp, we ate lunch and headed to Jackson, WY.  I thought it was a pretty cool mountain touristy town, but like all touristy towns…. Isn’t as entertaining as the Tetons that made Jackson famous.  The ski lift at Jackson Hole is RIGHT THERE on the edge of town. Pretty cool. My hometown needs a ski mountain, I think.  And a much-improved snow forecast….

THEY HAVE FOUR OF THESE ARCHES!  one one each corner in main square

We followed Tom’s recipe for the trout. Cooked 4 of them and holy moly….. They were fantastic!  

chow time

Served with a side of rice and steamed veggies.  Recipe as follows:

·         Leave skin on the trout FILLETS – yes, fillets. Cut off all bones you can, but know that some will still be in the meat.

·         Put a layer of AL foil on the grill and poke a couple holes in it.

·         Melt butter on foil to help skin not stick (and butter always helps)

·         Put fish on, skin down of course

·         Sprinkle on some garlic (we used garlic salt, cause that’s what we had)

·         Add some rosemary (from Tom’s garden)

·         Add slice of lemon

·         And to this, I added some lemon pepper

·         Grill about 5-8 minutes on low

·         Skin was my favorite part.  It had a stronger flavor and was a little crispy from the heat.

June 8  - Thursday - Day 6– still in Tetons – By Amanda.  This morning Travis, my dad(Shane), and I went fishing again. Different from yesterday, we actually caught fish! It wasn’t trout though; it was sort of weird sucker fish. That didn’t make it any less fun though.  We caught a ton! Probably over 60! They sure did put up a fight though. Once you got one hooked, it was like trying to hold on to a fire hose! At the end of the day my dad(Shane) caught one small trout. It was only about 6 inches long. Better than nothing though.

Later that day we went canoeing on Snake River. My dad and I went first, and it was pretty boring. It was slow, and in the middle part we had to paddle a lot. My mom(Deanna) and brother(Travis) went next and had fun. 

discharge off Jackson Lake dam - a good place to launch the canoe!! we really did put in just downstream of this! :)

Mom and Travis on Snake River

My dad, brother, and I decided we wanted to do a more adventurous river, so we went on one called Pacific Creek, but it was no creek. 

two kids, and one irresponsible "adult"

There were trees, sticks, and rocks everywhere! We got stuck in the shallow rocks a lot. I was half yelling at my brother to paddle and half praying to the Lord to save us. About half way through, we got to a bridge that we planned on going under, but it turned out there was only about a foot of clearance under it, and the canoe was taller than that, so we had to quickly paddle to the side and drag it up a hill to the street. My dad had to walk down the street to where my mom was parked, ready to pick us up, and drive back to us where we were left there on the side of the road. I’m pretty sure half the people that passed us thought we were homeless. I also think I saw an old lady pass us and almost start crying because she thought we were two homeless kids with a canoe.

Saw a bear on the way back to camp! 

this picture is for you, Mary!! yes, a bear! 

After we got back we had hamburgers, but I didn’t eat one because I was busy writing this.

Overall it was a pretty good day. J