July 11th, 2021
We were staying in Island Park, Idaho, with two, big national parks nearby: Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We decided to boat in both of them over a single weekend, which was a little bit crazy. Saturday, we did Yellowstone Lake. Sunday, we traveled to the Grand Tetons to do the biggest lake there, Jackson Lake.
The drive to the lake from Idaho is long, but you go by a lot of geysers on the way if you travel through Yellowstone National Park like we did. We didn't stop at any of the attractions, but it made the trip really enjoyable. We stopped at Flagg Ranch, midway between Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park, and thought about making dinner reservations. In the end, we didn't know which way we'd be heading back at the end of the day so we skipped it. It really seemed like a great place to stay if you're going to be visiting both parks, though.
We decided to put the boat in at Colter Bay, a place that looked the largest on the maps. It was a big area of shops next to a huge campground, with a big marina at the shore. For those of us who were kids in the 80s, we probably all remember what signs at tourist attractions in the woods looked like back then. Letters burned into wood, painted white on a brown, painted sign. There were lots of these types of signs, and the buildings were old but clean and well cared for. It felt like a trip back in time, and it was awesome.
We got the boat out, and the scenery was awe inspiring. The Grand Tetons are huge, pointed mountains, and Jackson Lake is at the base of a long range of them. The lake is special because there are many islands on it, large and small, and you can camp on most of them. We were watching Mollie, Toni and Sue's dog, and she and Lacey were getting antsy. We beached the boat on one, smaller island for a bit to let the dogs play. It was buggy but lovely.
Then we cruised around the water to check out the scenery. We saw there was a pizza restaurant at another dock, so we took the boat to go find it. We didn't have any luck, but it was a cool trip to see where a bunch of boats were moored. We took a 360-degree video of that trip up until we got out of the water again at Colter Bay. Use your mouse to click and drag around the video, or move your cell phone to look around.
The car and boat trailer were in a big parking area shared with regular parking spots, and we met some cool people while were there. After we covered the boat and got ready to go back to Idaho, we noticed there was a restaurant across the lawn, so we checked it out. We were so glad we did! Not only was it a blast from the past (again), the food was amazing. We talked to the waiter for a bit, and he told us that Colter Bay was too far from the nearest town to support the people who worked there, so they all lived in cabins nearby while they worked there. It reminded us of the plot to Dirty Dancing, and it was such a cool story.
The sun setting over the Grand Tetons was distracting as we drove home, and so was the trip over Teton Pass (something the motor home would find extremely challenging, so we'd avoid it with the Fleetwood). We got home late and exhausted, but it was worth it. We can't wait to go back again.
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