The next stop on our adventure was in Jackson, WY where we stayed at a nice campground called Fireside RV Resort. To say the sites were close together is an understatement! Bob came up with a term and called it "slot camping". Let's just say you got to know your neighbors pretty well. Thankfully, we had really nice neighbors on both sides! Other than sites being so close, the campground was nice. It was very convent to town and also the Teton National Park.
We stayed in the area for 4 nights and went into the park everyday. We were excited to see bear and moose on our first visit in. Every pull off had stunning views and we enjoyed just driving around. We had a plan each day to see a different area and enjoyed different "activities" each day such as hiking, biking and kayaking.
Jackson is a great town, but was busting at the seams when we were there. It was September and after Labor Day, but the crowds were still pretty intense. We did walk around town one afternoon and enjoyed an amazing dinner out at a place called Local Bar & Grill. And of course we found a great brewery at a Thai restaurant, of all places. If you've been following my blog, you'll know we have been frequenting local breweries along the way. Bob said their IPA called the Juice Theorem is off the charts! As a matter of fact we had to try it a another day just to confirm it was as good as he thought.....it was!
One day we took the kayaks into the park and spent the morning on a beautiful lake called String Lake. We had the lake all to ourselves. A ranger told us about it and that everyone goes to Jenny lake and to go to String instead. Boy was she right. We never saw anyone else on the lake!
There was a really nice, paved bike trail right across the street from us. We road bikes up to Teton Village. This is a big skI area in the winter and was fairly quiet this time of year. You can ride a tram up to the top but at almost $50 per person, we decided to skip and just sit outside there and enjoy a beer!
After leaving the RV park in Jackson, we drove a hour up the road to camp 2 nights at Colter Bay. The drive there was spectacular with many pull offs that had great views of the Tetons. I'm sure you have all been hearing about the awful fires out west. We were concerned on our first day when there was a lot of smoke in the area and only hazy views of the mountains. We were so excited when we woke up the second morning to find the air quality was improved and continued to improve every day we were there.
We passed a large bison heard on our drive. I of course made Bob pull over so I could take some photos.
We wanted to spend a few days at Colter Bay because we had heard how pretty the area was. It's right on Jackson Lake and we were planning to enjoy some nice kayaking. Well, imagine our surprise when we arrived to find the lake was pretty much drained! So we changed our plans and decided to take a long drive through the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It was really fun and we saw elk, moose and 3 different bears, one of which had a cub! We stopped at a pretty lake and had a nice picnic lunch. The drive was all along a dirt road so Bob was having a blast drivi the jeep!
After 2 days in Colter Bay we set off for Yellowstone National Park. We are almost done with that part of the trip but it will need to be a separate blog as we have done and seen so many great things! Stay tuned!