Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

We got into Grand Tetons National Park at the opportune moment.  We got there the day after a huge fire was presumed to be out and under control. Until that day the road we took was closed. The day after we got in the winds shifted, and the fire started back up, closing down the road again. It was pretty funny, almost like a gate opened for us then immediately closed again.

The first day in the Grand Tetons we went on a bike ride on a 6 mile long bike path. Our final destination was a visitor center in the town of Moose.  In the visitor center we watched a movie about a lot of the Grand Tetons’

past. The movie described the first people who came here and what they did.  Originally this place was named Trois Tetons by French explorers. Trois Tetons means the three nipples in English because that's what the explorers thought the mountains looked like.  Later on when it was translated into English people started calling the place the Grand Tetons.

The next day we went on a hike through Cascade Canyon (which was a real comforting name seeing as there were places where it looked like there had been a landslide). It was one of the longest most painful hikes I have been on.  We were originally planning just to go to the intersection, which would be roughly 14 miles round-trip. By the time we got to the intersection we had all agreed that we weren't that tired, so we decided to go an extra 2.5 miles to a place called Solitude Lake. 

On the way back I did something that was really stupid, even by my standards. I decided to jog down the mountain and meet my parents at the car, but that wasn't the stupid part. The stupid part was that I forgot to bring water. By the time I got to the car I could barely talk because my throat was so dry.  I needed to drink about a quart of water before I could form a comprehensible sentence.  The upside of doing the hike was the fact that we got to go out to dinner afterward. That was the best taco salad I've ever tasted. The downside was that I looked like I was drunk hobbling to the bathroom in fuzzy slippers, but that was hardly my fault since I couldn't feel my legs.