Day 5: The Grand Tetons

Our first glimpse of the Grand Tetons:

It is our favorite mountain range so far.

The night of Day 5, after a lovely day in Yellowstone, it was supposed to get into the 20s and snow, so we decided to rough it hotel-style. And by roughing it hotel-style, I mean that we stayed at the very lovely Jackson Lodge for the night. The view from the lobby was pretty incredible and is now my desktop on my Mac.

When we asked what the rate was, the young gentleman at the front desk showed us a brochure with a not-cheap rate on it. He then crossed it out and wrote down a new number that was a 40% discount, and said that if that number didn't work for us, he may be able to work something out. When we said that it was still a little on the pricey side, he turned the brochure around again and wrote a new number that was a 50% discount. We'd like to think that it was the cute young ladies discount.

After ooo-ing and aww-ing at the view from the lobby (above), we grabbed a delicious dinner at the diner in the hotel. Emmie and Parm split meatloaf and, according to them, the best mac and cheese and bacon dinner ever. Connie (pictured at right below), our server from Palm Springs who lives there during the summer and sells jewelry, chatted us up the whole time.

The next morning, we sat in the lobby for a long while admiring the view and blogging (see the last parade of blogs that were posted at approximately the same time), and while we were writing and enjoying the view, saw an older gentleman face-timing his grandson to show him the view (pic below). It was like he walked out of an Apple commercial.

Afterwards, we had a delicious breakfast at that same diner and had an equally wonderful server named Sherri. Connie told us that we should mention her name to give her props in our eval of the hotel, so we decided to do the same for Sherri. I went up to her as we were leaving to try to read her name-tag and simultaneously asked her what her name was... the result was a pretty awkward scene that I can't do justice to in a blog.

With a delicious breakfast behind us, we set off to find a good hike and then make the 9-hour drive to Glacier. We of course stopped for a photo shoot along the way.

Once we actually found the right trail (it took us a few times), we set off towards Phelps lake. We lost the trail on the way up due to the massive amounts of snow still piled on the ground, so foraged our own way to the lake. And of course, we had to have some fun with the snow. For the record, I did hit Emmie with this snowball.

The lake was was breath-taking once we got there.

On our way down, we traveled another path-less-followed. As we were walking along, hooting and hollering to keep the bears away, Emmie and I heard Parm scream. Which, for the record, is not the correct thing to do when you encounter wildlife (see the Yellowstone post). Turns out that there was a moose (pictured below) less than 10 ft. from the trail. After deliberating for a minute or so, we decided to calmly walk past the moose on the trail. Thankfully, he only looked up from his grass-grazing for a moment as we passed him/her. Once we were a safe distance away, we ran like the wind! We also found out later on that moose are actually quite an aggressive animal, so we are especially thankful for our tame moose encounter.

After the exhilarating hike, we had a not-so-exhilirating drive to Kalispell (except driving through the beautiful Flathead Lake at the end). Thank you for driving, Emmie! We also saw the colorful character below while driving along - notice the awesome mustache and haircut.

As if seeing the moose wasn't enough of a wildlife encounter for the day, we also had a close encounter with an osprey.

We were minding our own business driving down the highway when a huge bird, like 6 ft-long wingspan, came flying straight at us from the other side of the highway with roadkill in tow. (Parm edit: the bird's wingspan was as wide as the front windshield and snarled directly at us) We tried to avoid it, but clipped a little bit of the bird. We thought that all was well and good since we say it flying away, but then looked back at the bike rack and saw something gnarly in the spokes of one of the wheels. I thought it was a talon, Emmie saw feathers, and we were all really freaked out. We pulled over at the next rest stop, paper towels in hand and ready for some blood and guts. Turns out that it was just a piece of bark that looked like a talon and/or feathers (see below). That was definitely the most intense wildlife encounter we've had so far.