Western Road Trip - [Wyoming]

 We headed to Wyoming. We passed Rock Springs, WY to camp for a night because it was getting too late. We woke up in the morning and headed the road to Jackson, WY. We pulled into the city of Jackson, and WOW. We have not seen this many people on our road trip. The town was packed and full of people everywhere. We decided that this was our only day to be in the city to walk around and get some grocery shopping done. We found a campsite not far from the town in the Elk Refuge Center. We set up camp and headed to the city. The city is very touristic with a bunch of restaurants and clothing/jewelry stores (we have some good recommendations later in the blog post!), we are not huge on these kind of places so basically we just walked around and people watched. We ran some errands and headed back to our campsite early to see the sunset and get some sleep before our big hike tomorrow. 

Curtis Canyon Campground

The hike we had planned was the Paintbrush Divide loop. The trail would take us 20 miles up through the Paintbrush Canyon and back down along Cascade Canyon.

Starting out at the Leigh Lake Trailhead, it's a nice quiet nature walk along the side of String lake until you eventually cross over the river (We didn't realize there was a bridge until we were actually IN the water).

walking in the water instead of the bridge!

After drying our feet, the trail slowly began to climb up through the dense evergreen forest. The majority of the hike through the canyon was a nice steady grade that wasn't very difficult. Passing by many other hikers and mule caravans heading the same direction we were. After almost 5 miles, we broke tree line. We had a feeling the leg burning section couldn't be far. With granite cliffs towering above on either side, the climbing really started to pick up. With almost 4,000 ft of gain in the first 7 miles, we would get almost have our climbing in the next 2 miles. This was by far the most beautiful section of trail! It was hard to pay attention to the trail when the scenery around looked like a backdrop on a green screen! The trail turned from hard packed dirt, to large chunky fist sized rocks, until finally it was just loose gravel that would just waterfall down at each step. 

Once we crested the top and did the mandatory photo op at Paintbrush Divide, we ate our wraps. From here we made the 2 mile descent to Lake Solitude. Now the crowds started to show. Most people would hike up to this lake via the Cascade Canyon route (The way we were heading down). We enjoyed the view while filtering drinking water for a bit. Oliver even went for a polar plunge in the lake!

From there it was a steady downhill through Cascade Canyon down to Jenny Lake. Here were the notorious crowds of National Park tourists. We moved along quickly, making a left on the Jenny Lake trail that would end our loop taking us back to where we started. Our adventure wasn't quite over yet though. We came up on an older gentleman that had ridden his mule into a yellow jacket nest. It bucked him off into the brush next to the trail. A few other hikers that were there, helped him up and get his mule back. Then we started passing people heading the opposite way we were telling us that up ahead, there was a momma grizzly bear with two cubs. We treaded lightly, but never saw anything. Finally, after 9 hours, we made it back to the car. We treated ourselves to a blizzard and burger at DQ after an amazing day in the Tetons. 

We had a day of rest the next day and checked out Teton village, nothing much that was up our alley. Just a ski village that was super touristic with the same looking buildings and expensive pre made meals... we do not have much things about this place, but we would choose Jackson over Teton Village. 

Places to eat in Jackson, WY

• Hand Fire Pizza - super good handmade pizzas, the building is an old theatre and is an open area that you can see the cooks work. Super friendly and efficient staff. We has the Chew- BACA pizza. 
• Persephone Bakery - nice, boutique bakery and coffee shop that has plenty of outdoor patio seating, coffee is good and baked goods are made locally. Try the lemon lavender pound cake!
• PICNIC - more local coffee shop. Had more parking than at Persephone. Lots of indoor seating and good selections of breakfast and lunch options till 3 pm. 

Persephone Bakery

The last adventure we had in the Tetons were separate! Oliver ran a 50K along the Teton Crest Trail!

The Teton Crest Trail is a 40-mile trail and it runs through the most scenic parts of the Tetons with quite a bit of elevation gain. The vast majority of people do this in a span of three to five days hiking and backcountry camping. Because we had hiked the Paintbrush Divide (which was technically the last 13 miles of the Teton Crest Trail), so Oliver decided to do a 50K for the rest of the trail. (Oliver will be summarizing his run!)

Sarah dropped me off at the Granite Canyon trailhead at about 7:45 am and from there it is about of 10-mile gradual climb up to Moran Lake. I was pretty much in the thick forest until this point. Once passed Moran Lake, it was alpine meadows and wildflowers for just miles and miles. The trail leveled out a bit until I hit Alaska Basin which was about at the 15 mile mark. At the Alaska Basin there was an alpine lake where backpackers were sunbathing and setting up camp. It seemed to be the popular spot for all the backpackers. From there I had the steepest climb of the day which was Hurricane Pass. It was short in length at about 2 miles, but climbing close to 1500 feet. once I have passed that, you get awesome views from the back of the Tetons. You see the Grand Teton right in front of you! You can see glaciers, lakes, and beautiful wildflowers! Then it dropped about 2000 feet along the ridge with a lot of switchbacks and then it flattens out and you keep running down for the next 5 miles until you hit Cascade Canyon. We have already hiked this part of the trail a couple of days ago and tourist became more abundant the closer I got to Jenny Lake. I met Sarah at the end of the Jenny Lake Trail and we swam in the lake to get clean before heading to Jackson for some food!

aannnndd while Oliver was running, I decided to run the loop trails around 4 lakes in the Tetons. Phelps Lake, Bradley Lake, Taggart Lake, and the most well known Jenny Lake. The first couple of hours there was nobody to be seen, so I held my bear spray in my hands and turned on a podcast (they say loud noises help, so I relied on the podcasts). Once the afternoon hit the trails started to get more congested and parking at each trailhead was a pain, but it all worked out! No bears were seen for all three of my runs, and I was able to get 22 miles in! Super happy I was able to see a lot of the Tetons during this trip. I am definitely looking forward to the next couple days of just relaxing and exploring the state of Montana!

Taggart Lake