Jackson and Grand Tetons – July 17th – 21st, 2016

If you are ever traveling to Grand Teton National Park area we highly recommend you check out Shadow Mountain. Not only is there the most stunning view of the Grand Teton’s (see photo below), there is full LTE cell service, it is not overly crowded, and best of all… IT’S FREE! We stayed for three nights.

After abandoning the first site due to a nearby beehive, we spent the day recuperating and learning to play cribbage. The next morning we woke up to a warm fridge and no propane for cooking. Assuming we were just out of propane, we went into Jackson to refill. We were correct in our assumption, but incorrect as to the reason why. Turns out that a pinhole leak in the fill valve to the propane tank had developed overnight… BERNARD!!!! Extra special was that there was no way to fix it or replace the valve without replacing the entire propane tank. I guess the employees at Rocky Mountain Westy were correct when they told us that the only thing we could do to prevent break downs was to pray to the Vanagon gods and create good karma – no killing bugs! We had killed far too many mosquitos in the Wind River Range… I suppose we deserved this one. We ordered the tank and parts and made plans to stick around Jackson until they arrived on the 21^st.

After our third night at Shadow Mountain we reluctantly packed our magnificent camping spot and went into the National Park to fight the masses of tourist stopping in the middle of the road for the most pointless attractions. We started making a habit of driving slowly and pointing out the window at trees and other inanimate objects just to see how many people we could get to pull over and get out of their vehicles. In all seriousness, the park was beautiful, but after almost a week without daily hygiene the best part was the showers that we took at one of the campgrounds. I lost so much hair during my double shampoo that it literally clogged the drain. Close second on the highlights of the Grand Tetons was the moose that we saw getting a sip of water in the river. That evening, we went into Jackson for the rodeo before stealth camping at a trailhead in Curtis Canyon. 

Crazy tourists doing yoga on the roof of their car with buffalo in the background (Maria, we thought you would get a kick out of this!).

View from the overlook of Phelps Lake in Grant Teton National Park.

Our last day in Jackson was spent trip planning on the internet, playing tennis, grocery shopping (and eating cake because it was Thursday), and hanging out all afternoon at our new buddy Kody’s house waiting for UPS to arrive. Quick back story: Kody owns an RV repair business in Jackson and was nice enough to let us ship the parts to his property, hang out all afternoon, borrow one of his tools, and fix our van at his place free of charge. Safe to say the man is a saint. The propane tank swap went surprisingly smoothly and we were out of Jackson with a full tank of propane by the early evening.