Episode 10: Grand Teton National Park
There are moments in life when you question your choices. For example: the first time you find yourself, at sunrise, brushing your teeth beside a horse while a line of forty strangers silently await their turn at a single porta-potty perched in the middle of Grand Teton National Park.
But, let’s get to that later. Ever since my husband and I first went to Big Bend National Park together in 2018, I’ve wanted to see more National Parks. I love and appreciate that the USA decided that it made sense to preserve some of our most beautiful, rugged, awe-inspiring terrain; and we’re such a large and diverse country that I want to see what each one has to offer. One of our retirement plans is to rent a sprinter van, and traverse the country moving from National Park to National Park. But, for now, we’ll hit them as and when we can. This summer, we wanted to go with the boys to Grand Teton National Park. In part because we’d heard it was stunning, and in part because an old friend of mine took his family on a horseback riding / chuck wagon camping adventure there a few years ago, and it sounded like a lot of fun.
We flew from Houston to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a 5am flight. Our very grumpy Uber ride (the kids, not our driver) started at 2:45, which put us at the airport at around 3:20am. What I should have known, and will never forget, is that the TSA doesn’t open bag drop or security lines until sometime between 3:45 and 4:00am, so getting to the airport any earlier than that is completely pointless, and only adds to the general hostility that seems to abound at IAH. After a brief pit stop in Denver, we arrived at Jackson Hole in the late morning and got checked into our hotel. We walked to Town Square for our obligatory antler-arch photo, and then walked to the Mountain King gondola just to get some exercise. For a hefty fee you can take the gondola up and have access to several rides and forms of entertainment, but we didn’t have enough time so we walked to Snake River Brewing for a quick lunch.
My husband’s lifelong friend Justin’s family is from Idaho, and Justin was up there, so he came to pick us up to take us fly fishing on the lower fork of the Snake River. He has a fishing jet boat, so we tried 3 or 4 different spots along the river, and caught a decent number of cutthroat and rainbow trout, and a few white fish over the 4 hours we waded, barelegged, in the frigid waters. The boys and I slept the whole hour and a half ride back to Jackson after the fishing was finished, and when we got dropped off at Sidewinders Bar and Grill that evening, Henry woke up and whined. We asked what was wrong, and he looked at us and said, “It’s been a long day, and I’m feeling a lot of different emotions right now!”. Which was as fair as it was funny.
The next morning at 9am, we got picked up on a bus for the start of our horseback riding / chuck wagon, camping adventure. After approximately 3 hours (which included a stop along the way), the whole group got dropped off at our meeting point, a wooded plain on the edge of Grand Teton National Park, where we all had lunch and met our guides. We then all packed into several horse drawn chuck wagons and rode them to the first campsite, Bergman (elevation 6,432 ft). We spent the afternoon going on two trail rides around a nearby lake, throwing hatchets and knives, and learning to rope. It was at this camp site that we were introduced to a few things. First is the aforementioned porta-potty, which was very much the only one available for everyone to use, and the sharing of which is what my husband’s nightmares are made of. And the second was the horses that we would ride for the rest of the trip. Michael’s horse was named Boots, mine was Lilly (who proved to be the most stubborn but lovable horse on the planet), Tyson had Jester, and Henry had Beauty. Over time, we all became really attached to our respective steeds, and couldn’t have imagined using a different one.
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After a somewhat rainy night, our group — twenty-five guests and about fifteen guides who looked like they were born wearing cowboy hats— did what would become our routine for the next couple days. We set off on horseback. Every day, we’d ride our horses for 4-6 hours to a new campsite — Bergman to Loon Lake (elevation 6,471 ft), then Loon Lake up to Calf Creek Pass (7,238 ft) — each ride more stunning than the next, and each campsite always with their trusty lone porta-potty. We all slept in two-person teepee-style tents, which we set up and broke down daily for ourselves; and which became our portable little kingdoms, complete with tarp-over pine-needle flooring and the faint aroma of campfire smoke clinging to everything.
The guides ably cooked every meal over an open flame. Breakfast varied from bacon and eggs to French toast, always sizzling in cast iron; dinner was barbeque chicken and beans one night, and steak, mashed potatoes, and fresh bread with honey butter the next. Evening meals were always followed by dessert, and then hours around a campfire. The guests all talked to each other, and the guides told stories and tall tales (sometimes it was difficult to tell which was which), and sang songs and recited cowboy poetry. Conversation came easy under the wide Wyoming sky — the kind of talk that drifts between laughter and quiet awe as the Tetons glowed pink in the setting sun.
By the final morning, as we packed up our teepees one last time, I caught myself feeling oddly sentimental about the dust and grime; the hard ground we slept on; the sore back, knees, and hips. Somewhere along our last trail ride at Calf Creek Pass, as I watched my boys play the “stick game” on horseback with 15 other guests, I realized this was the kind of discomfort worth seeking — the kind that leaves you filthy, tired, and absolutely alive. So yes, we returned to Jackson sore, sunburned, and smelling faintly of horse. But also, strangely, cleansed — not in the literal sense (definitely not), but in the way only a wild place can wash you clean from the inside out.