The travels of the Rambling Roses: July 30--- Hiking to Inspiration Point

23.66 miles in 1:51 I decided to ride to the Moose Junction visitors center from the campground on a road that I had not yet explored. We stay six miles from the parks north entrance, where I had to show my park admission card, and the road took me past Jackson Lake, a pretty big body of water, bigger than Jenny Lake, but this one is man made. I crossed the Jackson Lake Dam, and headed through pine forested, rolling hills, past Signal Mountain, past the turnoffs to String Lake and North Jenny Lake, to the South Jenny Lake visitors center. This stretch of road is one of the few in the park that did not have a bike trail, but the shoulder was sufficient and traffic is quite a bit lighter than down towards Jackson. The ride was one of great beauty, just a little workout before meeting Pam and Buddy for about a six mile hike to Inspiration Point. I did have one scare when I finished riding. I took my biking gloves off and noticed that my wedding ring was missing. I spent the entire day thinking I had lost it when I was shaking my arms out during the ride, but as it turns out, Pam found it the following morning on the picnic table at our campsite. I had taken it off to put on my gloves, like I usually do because the gloves fit real tight, I set it on the table and was distracted somehow before I put it back on. It was a relief to find it.

We started out hiking from the visitors center, amongst a cast of thousands, and things slowly began to thin out as we worked our way around Jenny Lake toward the real climb. We meandered through wooded, rolling hills, past a pond where a moose was getting a drink, then across a rocky terrain a few hundred feet above the lake, where we could see just about the entire Jackson Hole.

After getting back into the woods, we started quite an ascent, switch backing our way up to Inspiration Point. It was a rock outcropping, where you could see everything in the valley, and look behind you and see the Tetons rising into the clouds. When we got there, there was still quite a few people around, but we sat for a while, and things really thinned out for the descent. Hiking back down we met some people who told us that a bear was just spotted off the trail! Fortunately, we didn't run into Yogi!

After getting back, we decided to sit at Dornan's (where we rented the boat), on a rooftop patio, and have dinner as the sun set over the Tetons, and the Snake River rolled by, a few hundred feet away. We took some pictures of the sunset, but the Tetons are not really very photogenic at sunset. They get very dark and shadowy as the sun sets behind them, and there are no colors at all. Sunrise is the time when they seem to be best. Even though the Roses don't do sunrise, they look most beautiful when we first get up and open the door to see them.