Day 3: Hiking Jenny Lake

We spent most of Day 3 hiking around Jenny Lake in Grand Tetons National Park. We started out from the Jenny Lake Visitor's Center where we suited up in all of our warm clothes and headed out. The lake was beautiful and the water was extremely blue and clear. We made our way around the lake, stopping every few minutes (or sometimes, seconds) to take tons of pictures. It was the kind of place where you could close your eyes and blindly take a picture and it would still come out looking like a postcard. Our first destination was Hidden Falls, a giant waterfall coming down the mountain. It took us almost two and a half hours to get there, but we made it. The view of the falls was great and the water was freezing (we didn't swim, we just stuck our hands in). Our next destination was Inspiration Point, 7,200 ft. above sea level. From Hidden Falls it took us around 45 minutes to make the steep climb to Inspiration Point, which was on top of a rocky ledge that oversaw Jenny Lake and much of the National Park. The view was absolutely worth the 4 mile hike.
Some guy being inspired.

From Inspiration Point we continued up the mountain a little further through what is known as Cascade Canyon. We had not seen much wildlife on the hike, but in Cascade Canyon we saw many, many marmots. Some were eating, others were just lying in the sun. We also saw our first piles of snow, which we were not used to in the middle of June. We each threw a few snowballs at each other and I built a little snowman:Shortly after, we decided to head back. We were all tired, hungry, and pretty sweaty. Luckily, the Park had boats going back and forth across the lake, so we only had to walk about a mile and a half to the boat dock. When we got there, a nice guy named Matt let us onto the boat. The ride across was much better than walking another two and a half miles and the view of the lake was great the entire way across.
When we reached the other side, we went straight back to the Visitor's Center for a much needed bathroom break. We also picked up a little snack in the store and went back to the car where we ate lunch from our cooler. After lunch, the girls walked around outside while my dad and I took a short nap in the car.

After our nap, we drove back to the Indian Arts Museum where we finished up the exhibit we had been looking at the day before. The museum was nice and had plenty of cool artifacts (notably, a tomahawk turned into a peace pipe).

We left the museum around 5:30 and headed towards the exit of the Park. On our way out, we decided to check on our baby birds, baby fox, and baby owl that we had seen the day before. As we drove towards Mormon Row, we saw a line of cars on the side of the road and looked around for an animal. Once again, it was a grizzly! It looked similar to the one we had seen on our second day and it was near the same place, but there was no way of knowing if it was the same bear.

As we traveled down a narrow dirt street near Mormon Row, another sighting made us stop. This time, a herd of bison were crossing the street right in front of our car. The video below shows them entering a farm, which is actually not where they are supposed to be. The gate just happened to be open and the bison simply decided to walk into this unfortunate farmer's yard.



When we finally reached Mormon Row, we saw that the baby birds were no longer there. We decided that they had either flown away or been eaten. We hoped it was the former.

Next, we went to see the owl, which was actually flying when we pulled up to the house. We all watched it fly (its wingspan was incredible) and land on a telephone tower. Since this owl looked bigger than the baby, we guessed that it was most likely its mother.

The fox was not in the same place as it was yesterday. It had actually moved to a place behind the shed of the house, where it was sitting with another fox that looked exactly like him (since we were pretty far from where the foxes were, there was some debate as to whether or not the two animals were foxes or coyotes. They looked similar to the one we saw yesterday, but from where we were we could not tell exactly what they were, only that they had pointy ears).

After checking on all of our animals, we finally headed back to the hotel for the night. As we drove back, we watched the sun set behind the mountains.