Fourth of July Failures

So we were pretty excited for the fourth this year...getting to be in the United States, (for Jesse only the 3rd time in 7 years) see firework displays and celebrate the good ol' American way.

Plan A was to head into the nearby town of Jackson, go to a rodeo, and then watch the display in the evening.


Plan B was to head to a nearby Mountain where you could see the display from Teton Village and Jackson, and then head to a nearby camping site.

Well, fireworks were officially banned in the county because of the bad drought and our camping spot ended up being full.  It's was a little disappointing not being able to see fireworks this year, but we would have to be idiots to argue.  It was a good decision.  The recent forest fires are already too close, and we would really hate to evacuate.

Moving onto Plan C, we decided to go camping a little further into the woods and reserved a spot near Leigh Lake.  The campsite was supposedly 1.5 miles from the parking lot, so we walked as quickly as possible to reach the spot before the sunset (unfortunately, we left later than intended because work got out late).  Now we are very aware that we ARE in fact in a national park and there ARE in fact wild animals all over so we knew if we didn't hit the halfway point with plenty of time to get to our campsite by 9:00, we would turn around.    

15 minutes into the hike, Jesse heard a big splash in the water and looked over to see a very big rump 10-15 feet away.  We froze, and got a pretty good glimpse of a female moose.  Thankfully, there was no baby near and she didn't seem too concerned that we were close enough to jump on her back and ride her.  We continued onward.

25 minutes into the hike we came across some bear scat.  It looked to be about a day old, so not a huge deal,  we continued onward...

30 minutes into the hike, more bear scat.  Fresh, dark brown, spankin' new bear scat.  After a few words that should not be mentioned slipped from my mouth, we whipped out the bear spray and decided instantly we should NOT be moving forward on this trail.  We were probably only a few minutes away from our site, but we did not want to be sharing a bed with our bear friend.

After we turned around and headed towards the car, singing loudly, yelling "hey bear, coming through" and making up word games to play, we ran into more bear scat.  Indeed, it was a very good idea to be heading back to the car.

We asked God to clear the path to the car...no bears and no moose standing in our way, and He did.  No more troubles, we made it back to the parking/picnic area.  We ended our evening at a picnic table, drinking hot chocolate with a curious deer by our side and listening to some good music.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!  It may not have turned out as we planned, but it was good day full of memories :)