After I parted ways with Joe, Jake, and John I rode only 20 miles into Jackson and waited around for a few hours to check into the hotel. I finally got to check into our room , which was a cute little cabin with two queen beds, a kitchenette, and living space area. The first thing I did was take a really long hot shower. It had been a few days since I got to take a nice shower! Then I did my chores: laundry, washed dishes thoroughly, aired out the tent and sleeping bag. Then I spend the rest of the day sitting around playing on the Internet and watching trashy tv. My dad showed up around 6 in the evening and we went out for drinks and dinner.

The next day we cooked a big breakfast and explored Jackson a little bit. We drove up to Teton pass and parked and did a short ridge line hike. At the end of the ridge, we got a nice view of the hole in which Jackson sits. Jackson Hole is actually in a hole. We hiked through the alpine meadows, back to the car, and headed into town for a beer and then went out for dinner. We stopped in the Million Dollar Saloon, a classic attraction in Jackson, and the bar stools are horse saddles! It was kind of a funny sight to see a bunch of frumpy old people plopped on top of the saddles. After our 30 minutes of being obnoxious tourists we walked across the street to have drinks on the balcony of a different bar and continued to be regular tourists. I had a big gin and tonic and it was delicious. Then we walked down to the Genevieve Cafe in search of a steak. We decided to split the buffalo steak special. We were pretty disappointed with our meal. The presentation was ugly and the meat was bad. I was expecting a gamey steak, but not one that tasted like sulphur. We didn’t finish out meal and walked away hungry. At least the manager took the cost of the steak off the bill. We ended up getting a small pizza to go on the way back to the cabin.

On Wednesday we drove back to the Tetons and parked at the Lupine Meadows trail head. We hiked up about 3000 feet in five miles to Amphitheater Lake and Surprise Lake. From Amphitheater Lake we continued up to a saddle near Disappointment Peak. What a view! The wind was blowing pretty hard and one had to take extra caution not to get blown off the mountain. It was a pretty long way down! After resting up a bit we hike back down to the parking lot and headed back to Jackson. We really wanted a good steak so we just bought and cooked our own on the grill. It was much better than the froufrou sulphur steak that we attempted to eat the night before. Mmmmm. We stayed in that evening and enjoyed the cool weather from our little porch. Fall is definitely in the air out here and it makes for great cycling, hiking, and camping weather.

Yesterday, instead of going to Yellowstone for the day we decided to back track the trans am to Dubois. There was a lot of really pretty red sandstone and neat rock formations that I thought my dad would enjoy seeing. So, after some research we found that there was a “rock hounding” site where we could potentially find petrified wood fragments and agate. We drove up and over Togotwee pass and down into Dubois, had lunch at the cowboy cafe, and drove 20 miles into the backcountry. We walked around the river bed for almost two hours and found a few pieces of petrified wood and I found a tiny chip of agate. Even though we didn’t find a ton of rocks, the scenery was unbelievable. It’s completely different from the Tetons on the other side of the pass. After our rock hunting expedition we drove back to Dubois, had a beer, and then crossed over the pass. On the other side of the pass the sun was setting behind the Tetons. It was so smoky when we crossed over on the bikes that you couldn’t see the Tetons until you were almost at the base. But yesterday they were clear and vivid against the orange sky and we could see them from 30 miles away.

Now we have the car packed up and are getting ready to head to Yellowstone. My dad will continue on into Montana to take care of work business and I will spend the next few days in the National Park. Hopefully I will be able to find a wifi spot so that I can get this post up now instead of a few days from now.

Happy almost fall!

Cheers,
Lauren