23: Jackson Lake, Wyoming

Day 23:  Tuesday, July 14, 1981
Yellowstone Park to Jackson Lake:  70 miles

It was a chilly morning.  Some of the other campers had arisen at 5:00 and were already gone.  We awoke at 6:00 as usual, and by the time we finished breakfast, it was almost 7:30.

Jack, Guy, and Rick went on ahead while I put in a call to Dad.  I said I'd meet them at Old Faithful.  Before stopping there, however, I toured the middle geyser basin.  Fantastic, of course. Everything in Yellowstone is.  When I arrived at OF, Guy and Jack were just leaving.  I managed to watch OF while repairing another flat, then saw some of the other geysers and pools in that area.  The road Dad and I took in 1967 that runs through that area and past the Morning Glory pool has been turned into a walkway, and a whole new road and interchange have been built to the west to handle the increased traffic.  By the time I left OF, I was two hours behind the others.

Another cool geyser

Morning Glory Pool

After a snack at West Thumb, I headed toward the South Entrance, with stops at Kepler Cascades (a friendly crow and a Mennonite family were there), and along the Lewis River Gorge.  That was a nice downhill, but from there on it was an up-and-down grind to Jackson Lake and the start of the Tetons.

As luck would have it, I had some more flats - went through all my inner tubes.  I had the dubious benefit of seeing sunset over the Tetons:  no clouds, but the mountains were pretty.  It was a few minutes after nine (and before dark) when I reached the Colter Bay campground on Jackson Lake, where I found the others and sat down to a late supper.  Even with the tire trouble, it had seemed like a 50-mile day, but we had put in 70 miles.  Not bad.

Our campground at Colter Bay