National Parks Vacation Day 8

On Friday morning we set off for the Wyoming part of the trip. We met Heather and Randy at the highway exit in Park City and set off to caravan up to Teton National Forest. As we drove into Star Valley and through Alpine and into the Teton-Bridger National Forest all kinds of memories kept flooding back. The Snake is so beautiful and I was tempted to cancel all of our previously scheduled plans to go white water rafting, but the kids are not quite big enough for it yet.

We drove through Jackson and up to the Tetons. I loved every second of being there. I want to become rich and famous just so I can buy some property there - no other real reason honestly.

We went up to Jenny Lake. The South parking lot was packed so we went to the North side of the lake to a picnic grounds and then drove to the scenic lookout. The camera did not perform well but you can kind of see the incredible view of the mountains we were surrounded by on that georgeous glacier-fed lake. The water was crystal clear and beautiful. Randy was showing the kids how he could skip any rock (really, he can) and I walked out into the lake a bit on some stepping stones.
That set off a chain of events that of course ended with the kids dripping wet to their elbows. It was a blast though. Peter walked right into the water and sat down. It was beautiful and we could have spent hours and hours there.

We all dried off and headed down to Jackson to check into our condo at Snow King. Very fun for me as I always remember looking at Snow King and saying "Some day I will visit Jackson and stay there." That was back when I was living a former 6 x 8 costume closet converted to a handmade double bunk bedroom in the back of the theater. The condo was very nice and we enjoyed our time there. We stopped by the theater and I got to see Vicki, my director when I did Big River there back in '93. Her kids were all 10 and down back then so it was fun to see a couple of them working there with her all in their twenties now. Crazy how fast time flies. We went to the shoot out, which has changed quite a bit since I did it, but still uses very loud blanks. Peter didn't care much for it but the rest of the kids enjoyed it.

We went to dinner at Mountain High Pizza Pie after finding a line of 15+ people outside Billy's Burgers which - in my memory - only sits like 10 people. The play was fun to see and brought back all kinds of memories. My YA director's daughter was in the show, another little kid in my memory who is now a talented 20-something.

After the show ended, the bus service to the hotel had already closed for the day, so we walked. It was pitch black in a lot of streets and the stars were bright and incredible. You could see the Milky Way as strongly as I had ever seen it before.

Randy, Heather, Micah, and I stayed up quite late after putting the kids to bed and play ed scrabble and just enjoyed each other's company. The next day we were off to Yellowstone.