Road Trip - Summer 2015: Day Four

The fourth day of our vacation (Thursday, July 9) was interesting. We moved to our new campsite, which was easily 3 or 4 times bigger and had room to park the trailer. It was a relief. We dropped the trailer there and headed south to see the Grand Tetons. 

Taking a little hike near Lewis Lake.

Autumn at Lewis River.

We turned off on Grassy Lake Road just to see what we could see. There were quite a few campsites on that road and I thought it would be nice to camp there if we ever go back to Yellowstone. Not far down the road Ben spotted an animal in a field. (Side note: whenever there was an animal sighting, it was almost always Ben who saw it first, even though he was usually driving and I had my nose plastered to my window searching any sign of a bear).

The animals were WAY out in the field. I didn't even try to get a picture of them because I knew my camera couldn't pick them up, and even Ben's camera only shows brown blobs. 

Photo by Ben. If you enlarge it, you can see two brown figures sticking up out of the top of the grass like fuzzy, photoshopped sasquatch. We came up with all kinds of theories about what kind of animals they were, but our favorite theory is that they were bears (mostly because we really, really wanted to see bears).  :)

 

Grassy Lake Reservoir. Photo by Ben. We drove as far as the reservoir and then turned back. It was an unpaved, one-lane road, so it was quite a long drive.

View from Grassy Lake Road. Photo by Ben. 

It began to rain off and on, and Ben fell asleep on the way back. (He wasn't driving this time.)

 

On our way back into the park at the South Entrance, we had to take the kids' photo by the sign. 

When we got back to camp, it began raining in earnest. We started moving everything under cover and made room for the kids to come into the trailer because water was beginning to pool under the tent. As we were bustling around, Sean came up to us and said he could hear hissing coming from one of the wet tires of the Durango. He said when he put his finger over the top of the tire, the hissing stopped. Upon investigation we confirmed he was absolutely right: the rear passenger tire was already significantly low.

Luckily, there is an auto repair shop in Yellowstone Park. And even better, it's in our campground! Ben and I were both so relieved that he didn't have to change that tire himself in the pouring rain, we didn't even balk at the price of the repair. I'm sure Yellowstone makes a killing off people like us, but we walked away feeling nothing but grateful.

The rain kept coming and coming. The campsite flooded. Most of the barkdust you see in the photo above is actually floating on the top of the water. It was very deceptive and a couple of us soaked our shoes learning the hard way.

We ate a dinner of sandwiches and lil' smokies using the propane stove in the trailer. We played card games and enjoyed the coziness as the pounding of the raindrops against the canvas fought to drown out the sound of the kids' laughter. 

After a while, Ben and I drove over to the visitor center and got Sean a treat for his discovery of the hole in the tire. We thanked him so many times he actually began to blush. We paid special attention to the other campsites as we drove and noted that there were very few that were not under water like ours. It was by far the wettest day of our trip.

We invited all of the kids to sleep in the trailer, since the dryness of the tent was in question. Only Sean took us up on the offer.

Fitbit step count on July 9: 6,403 steps