Day Twenty Seven and Twenty Eight, Grand Teton National Park, WY: Check In

I don’t have the time to write a complete post right now, but I thought I would just give a brief synopsis of the last few days for now, and fill in the details with pictures tomorrow…

Thursday, Day Twenty Seven:
I drove out to Grand Teton National Park. It’s a great drive and I have a ton of pictures from it that I still have to look through. After arriving at the park, I went on a short hike around Colter Bay. I camped out again in a National Forest. However, this forest has no dispersed campsites, and instead has gaggle of about 7 sites right next to each other, campground-style. I met a guy named Mike, a few years older than me, who had just gotten back from a week-long backcountry trip in Yellowstone.

Friday, Day Twenty Eight:
It’s now been four weeks since I began this trip. Mike and I start the Surprise Lake/Amphitheater Lake Hike in Grand Teton around 8.00am. The hike is a 10 mile hike that gains 3,000 feet in elevation and ends at Surprise Lake; another 0.3 miles brings you to Amphitheater Lake. After this hike, it was back to the same National Forest campsite. I have about 300 pictures from the hike and the one below is a good representation of what the rest look like.

The mosquitoes at that site were unreal. Even with mosquito coils burning and a terribly smoky fire, the air was filled with swarms and swarms of buzzing bites. This was the fourth night in a row that I have dealt with uninhabitable mosquitoes and I decide that there is absolutely no way I am dealing with it again tomorrow.

 Surprise Lake, ~9,900 feet

Saturday, Day Twenty Nine:
Today Mike and I went down to Jackson, a city of 9,000 just south of the park. We had lunch at Mountain High Pizza Pie before Mike drove back home to Minnesota. It was great to meet someone of a similar mind and have someone to talk to after having spent the last week alone. I then started looking for a place to spend the night. I went to a Sports Authority and asked around; I found that the Pacific Creek Trail that I was on is one of the worst mosquito sites around. But I was given a few other good sites to try tonight.

I have some requests in to CouchSurf with some people around Jackson, and hopefully some will come through tonight or tomorrow. I’ve slept outside now for eight nights in a row, and tonight will make nine. So I would really enjoy sleeping indoors – a place where I don’t have to pitch the tent, keep the food in bear safe containers, be constantly mobbed by bugs, etc.

I’m going to try to do a proper post tomorrow, with many more pictures and details from the hike.

Thanks again to everyone for following along and making comments, either through the site or by getting a hold of me. It’s a great feeling to know that people back home are interested in what I do, and humbling to know that they enjoy what I write.