Breakfast with a View – Our Wyoming Adventure, Part Seven

We started the Friday of our Wyoming adventure in our cabin at Flagg Ranch, just north of Grand Teton National Park. Earlier in the week, whenever I was worried that some part of the trip wasn’t going as well as it could or we had to leave a site sooner than we would have liked because time was tight, I kept telling myself, “Friday morning is going to be awesome.” It turned out, I was not wrong.

Weeks before we left, I read in my guidebook that one could book a breakfast cruise to Elk Island, a small island in the middle of Jackson Lake, the biggest lake in the Grand Teton National Park. “Lure yourself out of bed and into this wonderland with an early morning cruise that features breakfast on Elk Island.” If we were lucky, we might see some elk on Elk Island. If we were really lucky, we might even see elk swimming across the lake to Elk Island. Plus, the breakfast was supposed to be fantastic. I booked three tickets before we left Tennessee, which meant I knew exactly what we would be doing Friday morning in Wyoming.

We got up very early and packed for a day trip, a task made easier by the fact that we would be back in our cabin at Flagg Ranch that night. Two nights in a row in the same place is a bit of a luxury when we travel. We drove south into the park, catching our first glimpse of the Grand Tetons themselves, covered by morning clouds. We parked at the Coulter Bay marina, made the all-important bathroom stop, and found the cruise launch. Our fellow breakfast cruisers were a mixed bunch, mostly older, but with a few young people and families. We bundled onto our boat, listened to a safety lesson, and headed out of the marina onto Jackson Lake.

The whole cruise was a highlight of the trip, but what surprised me was what a great storyteller our first mate was. While the captain took the boat slowly out onto the lake, with Elk Island ahead and the Tetons to our right (starboard? port?), the first mate regaled us with tales of John Coulter, the mountain man after whom Coulter Bay was named. Coulter was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition of the early 1800s, but left the expedition just before they returned to civilization, preferring to spend his time exploring a good chunk of Wyoming, mostly on his own. One Coulter story our first mate told with particular enthusiasm. In 1809, an altercation with a large group of Crow warriors left Coulter running for his life into the mountains, without weapons, supplies, or even clothes! He survived, but not after spending eleven days in the wilderness. These days, we have reality TV shows based on this premise, but Coulter was the original.

Once we arrived at Elk Island, we disembarked and made our way to a camp site, where a few cruise company employees, dressed a bit like cowboys, were waiting with a hot breakfast. Sitting at picnic tables overlooking Jackson Lake, with the Grand Tetons themselves towering on the other side, the girls and I ate pancakes and biscuits and bacon and eggs and fruit and trout and lots more. Not so much the trout with the girls, but they ate well. I can’t tell you how amazing the view was. See the photos for yourself. After breakfast went down to the shore to take it in. We chatted with a few other families there, then boarded the boat for the trip back to Coulter Bay. Friday morning was, as hoped, awesome.

My only concern as we taxied into the marina was that the clouds hadn’t broken. The Grand Tetons were impressive when surrounded by clouds, but I suspected they would be glorious on a sunny day. I kept my fingers crossed that the sun would come out, but the morning was still looking gloomy. We walked from the marina to the state park visitor center, then used a trail map from the visitor center to make our way to the lakeshore trail.

Having secured hiking boots for both girls at this point, I was eager to put them to use. We started down the trail, stopping for a few minutes to try out the macro settings on the girls’ new cameras. The 11-year-old’s super zoom took some good shots, but the 7-year-old’s rugged Olympus was the champ, taking really beautiful close-ups of flowers and pine cones. I tried teaching the 11-year-old about depth of field — her camera has some useful manual settings — but the wind was picking up, so we moved on.

The trail led across a little bit of land connecting the shore with an island. We heard reports from other hikers that there was a bear on the island, which worried me a bit. I mentally reviewed what the park rangers back at the visitor center had said about bears, then told the girls to make some noise. The biggest risk with bears is surprising one. If they hear you coming, they tend to amble away. That led to a good twenty minutes of spirited singing by the girls, every song they could think of. We had some Christmas songs, some Taylor Swift, a bunch of rounds of “99 Bottles of Soda on the Wall.” I was maybe 5% scared of a bear encounter, and 95% thrilled to be exploring the forest with such enthusiastic hikers.

In the end, it wasn’t threat of bear attack that led us to cut our hike short, failing to circumnavigate the island. The wind really started picking up, bringing a cold rain with it. We pulled our hoods up, but it was clear we needed some shelter. Our sprint across that little bit of land, back to the shore, was… let’s call it exhilarating. I kept one hand on the 7-year-old, just to make sure the wind didn’t blow her into the lake! By the time we got back to the visitor center, we were soaked.

Such an adventure called for a trip to the gift shop, and we came away with a new member in our party, Trevor the Trout, a stuffed animal the girls fell in love with at the gift shop. I think it was Trevor’s permanent look of astonishment that the girls responded to. (We named him Trevor, not the National Park Service.) We hung out in our rental car for half an hour, eating a “picnic” lunch, waiting for the rain to pass, and entertaining ourselves through conversations with Trevor. Once the rain started to slow, we headed out. I kept hoping for better weather, but we would go see more of the park regardless.

By the time we reached Oxbow Bend, a particularly pretty section of the Snake River, the clouds were clearing and the sun was coming out. We took some photos of the river, with the Grand Tetons in the background. Not getting-explored-on-Flickr photos, but good photos, nonetheless. There were several tourists there with binoculars. I was hoping for a large mammal sighting, but no luck. We did, however, get to see a great blue heron hanging out at the riverbank and, much further off, two bald eagles sitting atop very tall trees. You could just barely make out a couple of white spots in my photo, but the 11-year-old’s super zoom showed them to be actual birds of some kind.

Our next stop was the top of Signal Mountain, named after the array of communication antennas at the peak. By the time we reach the top, the clouds had cleared (although not the ones hanging around the peaks of the Tetons) and my cell phone had service for the first time since we left Yellowstone. Conclusion: Signal Mountain is well named. The views from the top were fantastic, looking west toward the Grand Tetons and east over a flat stretch of Wyoming farm country. The girls and I spent a while up there, taking in the views, enjoying the sunshine, and checking out the bluebell flowers along the trail.

Aside: It was pretty strange to go 36 hours without any kind of cell signal. No Twitter, no Instagram, no email, no text messages, no outside communication of any kind. I think I liked it, since I focused a bit more on my girls and the world around us, but I wouldn’t want to do it very often. It was disconcerting to be so disconnected. I know, I know, this is how life used to be. But I appreciated the connection to my friends that my phone provides.

We did some more driving, enjoying the landscape and looking for large mammals. Other than some pronghorns, we didn’t see any, but the sun was shining, everyone was in a good mood, and Trevor was so impressed at everything we saw. Eventually we tore ourselves away from the majestic views and headed back to Flagg Ranch. After getting up at who-knows-how-early that morning for our breakfast cruise, we made an early night of it, walking around Flagg Ranch a little, enjoying another fantastic on-site dinner (seriously, the restaurant there is top notch), and turning in early. Trevor stayed in the bed with the 7-year-old. At home, she has literally fifty stuffed animals she sleeps with. She only had three on the trip, so she was happy to have one more!

That left two days for us in Wyoming. The next day, I was determined to get in a proper hike. More on that in my next post.