After our awesome float trip yesterday, we really wanted to immerse ourselves in the Park and do some hiking. We headed to the Jenny Lake area where there were several options for different levels/distances of hikes.
We knew we wanted to hike to Inspiration Point, which was on the other side of Jenny Lake. There is a boat shuttle that takes you across the lake so you can start your hike from there, but we decided to hike around the lake instead. Great decision, it was beautiful and I wish I could send the smell of the forest through the phone/computer so you could experience it yourself. It smelled like Christmas, but better. It even led us into a conversation about Santa and his naughty/nice list… which came in handy when someone in our family started to get really grumpy midway through the hike, haha.
We pushed on and eventually came to the trail we were planning to take, only to find that it was closed for maintenance! So instead, we went up towards Cascade Falls, a trail that took us higher than we were planning, but the views were worth it!
We arrived at a waterfall, Hidden Falls I believe, then hiked down to the boat dock to take the boat shuttle back across the lake instead of hiking back around the other side of the lake.
We boarded the boat, started across the lake, then we saw a moose! So exciting!
Side note, did you know that moose are great swimmers and can hold their breath underwater for a full minute?!
It was so fun to hike in Grand Teton after seeing it from the water yesterday. It would have been nice to have a little bit more time to explore the area… so maybe we’ll be back one day!
That night, we stayed at our second Harvest Hosts. It was Grand Teton Vodka Distillery and it sounded great! Unfortunately, as hard as we tried, the insane traffic in Jackson Hole, road construction, and that treacherous (10% grade) Teton Pass prevented us from getting there before they closed at 6pm. We were looking forward to the distillery tour and tasting a few samples. Regardless, it was a nice place to park for the night with a wonderful view of Grand Teton.
