Jellystone National Park, WY

We woke early on Thursday morning, broke down camp, packed it up and headed out. We were driving through Yellowstone from south to north on our way to Glacier. We opted not to stay overnight as all we’ve heard is how crowded the park is, but I still wanted to see it. The park was indeed crowded, but for good reason. It’s beautiful. And so varied! From the south, to the north, to the east and to the west, each sector of the park is unique! We stopped to see some geothermal action which was cool! We chose not to see Old Faithful based on the bad recommendation from the couple we met who were cycling across the US. They said there are benches set up for people to sit and wait and there were people around them complaining that the geyser was not going off and they had been told 1 hour.... I do not have patience for tourons like that. It’s estimated that the geyser goes off every hour or hour fifteen. But I mean, it’s nature…. So! We stopped and saw some other neat geothermal action!

Here is a super short video of a boiling mud puddle, how neat is that?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTAxvqEtATs&feature=youtu.be

The Abyss Pool

Bones of an animal (or unattended child?) in the geothermal waters...

Then we stopped for lunch at Gull Point. We had a lovely trunk lunch at a picnic table on the lake. We met a big family from Wisconsin! They felt bad for us and gave us cake! They saw us eating our backpacking food and brought us chocolate cake, saying we’d burn off the calories a lot sooner than they would! I don’t really like cake so Daveed got 2 pieces!

After lunch we headed through the northern part of the park and saw tons of wildlifes! TONS of buffalo! Elk! Mule deer! Sheep! And the quintessential black bear! On two separate occasions we saw small juvenile black bears. Little round ears and all. Sweet, now that we’ve seen bears from the safety and comfort of the car, I’m good. Really hoping to not see any on the trail….

We didn't get any pictures of the wildlifes we saw, but we did get this sweet shot of people looking at wildlifes! Do not approach the wildlifes- these people did not listen! They were looking at big ol mule deer and an elk with a huge rack

Yellowstone has beautiful scenery with mountains as the backdrop for the whole southern/south eastern sector

Lunch at Gull Point

We by passed Yellowstone Falls lookout proper due to over crowding, but we got to see this view instead! This is just above the falls.

We stopped in Great Falls, MT which is the hometown of my coworker Amy! One of her favorite childhood food joints was Taco Treat, so we had to stop there! The food was terrible! But it was a fun experience and super fun to send Amy a picture of the Taco Treat sign :) Then it was the final push to Glacier. 

Saw this cool heart shaped cut out in the cloud on our way to Great Falls, MT

Into the west

We drove the last hour in the dark and it was FREAKY. The road is narrow and closed in on the sides with thick trees and brush with plenty of blind curves. Deer. Jack rabbits. Stray dogs. WILD HORSES. Oh my. All of them on the road. All of them scaring the ever livin out of me. Especially the wild horses. Not something I’m accustom to seeing around a blind curve: 5 wild horses in the road. WHOAH NELLY! I think there were 4 or 5 occasions when there were horses on the road. Oi. I was so glad when we finally rolled into the campground and got off that road, I could finally relax! We arrived around 10:30, got our site assignment, set up the tent and crashed.

Grand Teton National Park, WY

The Tetons have been on my “list” for about as long as Glacier has. I was so excited to add it to the map when planning our road trip. Even though our stay was short, I’m so glad I finally got to see the Tetons with my own peepers! The mountains have a very unique look with their triangle/shark tooth peaks. A very picturesque view with Jackson Lake in the foreground. Now I know why these mountains are so heavily photographed.

We arrived in the Tetons on Tuesday night with enough time to find a campsite at Colter Bay and have a “backpacker’s dinner” on the shore of Jackson Lake with an awesome view of the Teton range. We watched the sun set behind the mountains while we boiled water and made a freeze dried backpacking meal. I wouldn't have it any other way: a gorgeous, secluded view passing a bag of food back and forth between David and I :) Just in time for us to finish eating and the sun to set, then the skeeters came out. In FULL force! AH! We packed it up and hauled ass back to camp. I remember when we lived in Alaska we would try to out walk/run the skeeters, now I was doing it again, 20 years later! For some reason they left me mostly alone but swarmed Daveed. All over his hat, jacket, pants- every where! We got back to camp and took refuge in the tent.

Dinner in the Tetons!

Next morning we woke to a blue bird day with calm waters on Jackson Lake, which made for a gorgeous reflection of the mountains. We decided to do an easy hike so we would have time to check out Jenny Lake and do some other cruisin around the park-- we were on a mission to see some wildlifes! I was super disappointed that I only saw one small herd of domestic buffalo when we first crossed the border into South Dakota. I wanted to see some real deal wildlifes!

We decided to hike to the summit of Signal Mountain, which is about 6 miles round trip. Word. We donned the perfume of our summer: sunscreen and bug spray, and hit the trail. The hike was very pleasant, the first part in the woods, the middle part exposed with awesome views of the Teton range, and the last bit switchbacks up and up in the shaded woods. The skeeters were super bad in patches, even with plenty of bug spray they buzzed our ears and got us on all of the smallest parts we missed with bug spray! GAH! They got me on my forehead and underneath my sunglasses!

We reached the false summit, took a few pics then continued on. We ran into a fire crew that was removing wildfire “fuel” from the woods. They were taking down dead trees and removing fallen trees. If a wildfire broke out, there wouldn't be as much fuel for the fire, causing it to die out sooner and therefore creating a barrier between the lodge, other tourist things and the grasslands that buffalo and elk frequent on the other side of the mountain. We continued to the summit and had the place to ourselves! Due to the wildfire work, the road that goes to the summit was closed, so there was only hiker traffic and no one went beyond the false summit- lucky for us! We had lunch at the picnic table right next to the geological marker for the summit, awesome! We baked for an hour or so in the sun, shirts optional, and enjoyed our lunch.

Summit of Signal Mountain

Summit lunch, shirts optional!

On our way down, we bumped into Pete from Miguel’s! Say what?? We thought he lived in Lexington/the Red, but no! He has been on a helicopter wildfire crew for the past 12 years and lives at Miguel’s during the “off season” from his wildfire job. He was helping out with cutting down dead trees. Super random to bump into him on Signal Mountain of all places! We thought our chance encounter with Dave and Julia in Ten Sleep was random, this tops it! We had a nice chat with Pete then headed for the cover of shade on the trail.

Shoreline of Jenny Lake

Cooling off

After we got back to the car, we had some ice cream, then headed to Jenny Lake. Wow. As beautiful as everyone said it would be. We walked in the lake up to our knees to cool off and boy did it feel good! After meandering along the lake for a while we headed back to the car, ready to EAT. We stopped at the bathroom and met a young couple who were biking across the US! They started in Seattle, I think, and were headed all the way to Boston! They were fun to talk to and also gave us a map of Yellowstone, which is where they came from and where we were going! The guy looked on his fancy maps for a place for us to go eat: his advice was to avoid Jackson Hole as it’s a tourist trap, so maybe try Moose? It’s closer and will surely be cheaper. Word. Well, we missed the turn off for Moose…..I was expecting to drive through a small town, but it turns out Moose is literally a turn off from the main road that runs through the Tetons, it looks like a general store and gas station, not a town :) Soooo, we keep on driving thinking we’ll be in Moose any minute...and then we are entering Jackson Hole. Huh. Oh well, we are WAY too hungry to drive anywhere else, so I guess we’ll eat here. Jackson Hole reminded us of an Aspen type town. Lots of rich people wearing cowboy boots and designer jeans. I’m not judging these people, on the contrary I was laughing at US at how much we did not fit in. We were in our hiking clothes, smelled of sweat, bug spray and sunscreen. I was wearing my hiking hat all day so there was no way I was taking it off, my hair was a sweaty, matted down mess!

We walked around for a bit trying to find a “reasonably” priced restaurant… Yeah right. So we ended up at an Italian restaurant named Nani’s. It was delish! I had their cocktail special of the summer and can’t wait to make it myself! It was called the Spaghetti Western, can’t think of a better name given the town. It had whiskey, amaretto and orange san pellagrino. Yum! Daveed had Blanton’s, you know it’s a fancy restaurant when Blanton’s is on the menu and you are not in Kentucky! We cleaned our plates, rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and realized we had an hour an a half drive back to camp. Woof. We were both so tired and drowsy.

We took the other half of “the loop” back to camp, which is what Pete recommended we drive if we wanted to see wildlifes. Well, we were not disappointed! We saw elk, mule deer and finally, buffalo!!!! Buffalo crossing the road, buffalo in the fields, buffalo in the trees, buffalo every where! Hooray!! Wildlifes! It was a great way to end our short stint in the Tetons.

We got back to camp and ran into the tent, evading the skeeters again.

Ten Sleep, WY

We rolled into Ten Sleep, WY on Sunday afternoon after a great day of driving. We stopped for gas and a trunk lunch break in the middle of nowhere, but at the fanciest, nicest gas station/rest stop/100 varieties of coffee and soda/cleanest bathrooms with the best smelling soap. If you ever roll past The Coffee Cup and need a break, I recommend it!

We rolled through Ten Sleep canyon and went straight to the brewery to get a guidebook. Then we found camping at Leigh Creek, to date it's my all time favorite campsite. Right next to a rushing creek with a nice picnic table. The sound of the creek was awesome and so relaxing. The canyon was really pretty, made me wish I knew more about geology. The rock was really cool, striped and layered.

We climbed at lower and upper Psychoactive walls after getting camp set up. The climbing was different than what we're used to in Kentucky. The rock is much sharper and blocky. The climbing style more techy and balancy. It was a fun change of pace. We had a good time climbing a few routes before the day light was gone.

Monday we climbed The Cigar and at the Downtown area. I had never heard of The Cigar until I saw a featured picture of it on NatGeo's instagram feed- had to climb it, and we did! It was fun and had all grades from 10a to I think 12d. We met a nice couple from Arizona who were also on a long road trip and they recommended stopping at the hot springs in Thermopolis, WY on our way to the Tetons. Free showers, that's all I needed to hear. Word. There were no showers in Ten Sleep.

I learned that the pockets in the wall, much like in the Red, are spidy holes. Spideys. Everywhere. In all of the pockets! Which was cruel because of course that spidey lair is the only hold that's gonna get you from here to the next hold! I practiced mind control on those moves- both to keep the spidey from moving and to get my princess ass over it.

Tuesday morning we packed it up and headed to the Tetons. On our way out of Ten Sleep we stopped at the one and only coffee shop in town and ran into Dave and Julia from West Virginia. The climbing world is so small! They were there to climb for a week or two. Then we stopped in Thermopolis at the hot springs and had a nice soak, and yep, a free shower! As part of the agreement, or was it a treaty? between the Native American tribe whose land the hot springs were on and the US government, the Natives wrote into the agreement that the hot springs and bath house would always be free to the public. Thank you!

YEEEHAAWW!

Trunk lunch

On the way to the Psychoactive walls

The Cigar

Hot springs in Thermopolis, WY

Thanks for the free shower!

Lets G-O!

It's go time! The car is packed to the rafters, gassed up and ready to go!

We had intentions of leaving Friday after work but David didn't get home till near midnight, and after working a 17 hour day, was not psyched to hop in the car. Thanks to M&P for bringing us midnight carnitas! :) So, we left on Saturday morning. After running a few errands and only going back to get one forgotten thing, we finally headed west around 10 or 10:30. We had awesome driving weather, apart from a strong storm system in South Dakota. We stopped to camp for the night in the Fort Pierre National Grasslands. We had intended to camp in the Buffalo Gap Grasslands but there was another huge storm system coming our way so we wanted to get the tent set up before the rain started.

We pulled off on a gravel road, found a flattish, grassy-ish spot and called it good. Apart from a couple dozen skeeter bites, which swarmed us from the grass, the spot was great: completely private, quiet and secluded. We didn't see any other cars. I suppose not many people camp on the side of the road, even if it's free.

Next morning we were up early with the sun and on the road by 7. There was nothing to stick around for, no water, no bathroom, so we stopped at the first rest stop we came across to wash up. The thing that took the longest to clean was our shoes. They were caked with mud from the grasslands! The mud peeled of in big pieces!

Made it to Rapid City and into Wyoming by mid morning! It was awesome to see the Big Horn Mountains as we drove into Wyoming! We had to drive 1000 miles to finally see some mountains!

Made my flips so heavy I couldn't hardly walk! Had to peel off the mud!

Food Prep- FINAL

Here it is, the last post about food prep! WOOT!

After 4 stores and 8 or 9 hours out shopping, we filled the car!

I grossly underestimated the amount of time it was going to take to shop for, unpack, repackage and pack all of our backpacking food... I thought we could get it done if we spent Friday night and all day Saturday. I was WAY off. By 10:00 pm on Sunday night we accomplished packing ONE resupply bucket :) Now, granted we unpacked and repackaged everything, which were the most time consuming tasks, but still...!




Starting to unpack his food...

Halfway through unpacking

Here is a small example of the repackaging we did. In this picture I measured out and packed servings of granola with powdered soy milk. On the ziploc bag, I noted the flavor and how much water to add. I wish I would have taken a picture of all the bags of instant rice I made...there was a mountain of them!



16 bags of granola

So once we were ready to actually start packing up our resupply buckets, we started with our 8 day stretch between Muir Trail Ranch and our resupply at Mt Williamson Motel.  We knew that all the other resupplies, which are all 4-5 days, would be a breeze once we figured out our 8 day situation. Well, we could not fit 8 days of food in our bear cans. Not even with David's superb tetris skillz. We can't fit 7 either, but we're going with it. We exchanged several foods in David's can for either something that packed down smaller, like instant mashed potatoes or higher calorie foods like macadamia nuts and cashews. The majority of David's food for this 7 day stretch now consists of nuts, olive oil and instant mashed potatoes... To eliminate one additional day on the trail we rolled a short, half day of hiking (5 miles) into two other days. Which now brings our 8 day stretch to 7 days. We will have several long days in a row at 12+ miles per day, but hopefully by this point in the trip we'll be in good trail shape and it won't be a big deal.


We finished packing up our buckets on Thursday night! So much for getting it all done on Saturday, wishful thinking Kimburly! Turns out we needed to make a quick run to Walmart for a couple small items including camping toilet paper. After painstakingly  packing up the other resupplies, we unpacked them and calculated how many calories were in each bucket, then divided that number by how many days the food was to last. We hit our targets with every bucket except, not surprisingly, the Muir Trail Ranch/7 day bucket. Daveed is low on calories and so am I, but we'll have to make due.



All packed up! That's one of the bear cans on the right, with the black lid and red sticker on top, not very large considering the amount of food we wanted to fit in it!

Can see the floor again!

Took the Mt Williamson buckets (resupply #4) and Lone Pine post office box to my parent's house on Sunday, they will mail these out for us in mid-July. It's too soon to ship them before we leave for our trip. When we taped the buckets shut, Daveed said "Are we really doing this??! Should we check them one more time??". Well, it seemed we had our bucket game down, but I had to open and re-tape the Lone Pine post office box twice because I kept forgetting things... We will pick up the box at the Lone Pine post office when we finish the trail, so it's not really a "resupply" box as it only has a few items in it, including a jar of Speculoos cookie butter from Trader Joe's!!!!! Yummm. It also has a few toiletry items, $0.98 flip flops, and clean clothes.

Resupply #4- off to Mom and Dad's

Now all we have to do is take the other 6 buckets to the post office next week and ship em out! We have a ton of leftover food, which we will take with us on the trip and eat as we go! Although we wanted to fit everything we bought into our buckets, the reality was that pretty much nothing actually fit in our bear cans. We even have leftover candy bars! We really shouldn't need to do any grocery shopping, apart from fresh produce and meats, at all until we finish the JMT! That means we have enough leftover food for the first 2.5 weeks of our trip! :)

Our departure looms near...!!! Super excited! There are just a few things left to take care of before we leave! Cleaning the apt is one of those things, albeit one of the not so fun things. Assembling the trad gear and sorting the rest of our climbing gear is another thing that needs to be done. I also need to dig out my swimsuit...it's somewhere in the depths of my closet.

We hit the road in 8 days!!!!

Goodbye Big Red

Our first stop on our shopping extravaganza on Saturday was REI. Daveed needed to buy some freeze dried meals. I brought along Big Red to make sure she was fitted properly since my back has still been giving me grief... All the muscles of my mid and lower back were strained really bad 4 weeks ago on a hike that was only 6 miles... couldn't walk, couldn't sleep, was in major pain for a week+!

So after a couple more light hikes with Big Red and my back still bothering me, I brought her in to get checked out. Our friend from the gym, Tim the Englishman, was working in the gear section when we went in and he spent almost 2 hours working with me to get fitted with the right pack. He was super patient and let me do and pack whatever I wanted to test out the fit and feel of the packs. Bless his heart. At the end of our 2 hour session and 4 packs later, I returned Big Red and walked out with the Osprey Aura 65L pack in a pretty green color. The Aura is the "ultra light" version of Big Red (Ariel 65L). The Aura weighs about 1 lb 4 oz less than Big Red! Which is HUGE! The main difference in the fit for me is the back part of the Aura. It's all mesh, no lumbar bump- which is what was killing my back on Big Red. The frame is also different. It curves around my torso for an awesome fit and feel. If you had wide hips it probably wouldn't feel good, so lucky for me I have boyish hips and a sort of narrow torso, so it wraps around me and fits great!

The Aura has a lighter duty suspension and hip belt, which in part is what makes it weigh less. Consequently, it also means that it can only handle a load of 30-35 lbs (hence its "ultra light" status). Big Red's beefy suspension and back structure allowed for a load of 50+ lbs. My goal for my pack weight has always been under 30, with my ultimate goal, fully loaded, being 28 lbs (or less!!). I think I can achieve it especially with the 1 lb+ weight savings of the pack in and of itself...

So, in this post, I say goodbye to Big Red. It's been a good ride although you rubbed me the wrong way towards the end...literally. And I welcome and introduce Verde to the family of backpacks. Lets go on some adventures and get to know each other.

Food Prep (and so it begins...)

Food prep post one of only two, I promise! I can't wait until we get out on the road so I can start posting pictures and other stories about things besides food and clothes!

But! The prep is all part of it. The food prep has been interesting and at times, has made me laugh. The sheer amount of food that gets all stacked up is amusing to me for some reason. I guess it just seems so ridiculous. We are prepping 28 days worth of food and about tripling the calories we would normally consume in a day. It ends up being a lot of food!



I found many gluten free items on Amazon for a cheaper price than I've found at Woodman's. I was able to sign up for Amazon Prime for free and get free shipping on pretty much everything! Those orange boxes (6 in total) are 72 bags of gluten free "ramen noodle" type soups!

Gluten Free Noms, All Ordered on Amazon!

REI was having their annual sale over Memorial Day weekend, which included a discount savings on Clif Bars, I ordered 30!!

Clif Bars, Gluten Free Bars and Drink Mix Packets

I think I kind of over did it on purchasing drink mix packets...I was thinking I'd want a few packets per day since I'm not sure how the water will taste on the trail, but they take up too much space and add too much weight. Instead of having 3 or 4 per day, I'm bringing 1 per day.

This weekend David and I will be buying the rest of the food we need and repackaging it, then sorting and packing it into our resupply buckets. Pictures and last post about food to follow!


Other things we've been doing to prep for the trip include training at the gym! I think I might do a whole post on training... We started working with Jim from the gym last week. He's helping to get us strong and fit for our trip. Using a combination of strength and VO2 max work, Jim's plan will have us strong and our muscles using and storing oxygen efficiently. Sorry Jim, I probably said that backwards or something, but I think that's what increasing your VO2 max is...? I forgot what you told us :)  The workouts have been super intense- neither of us has ever actually "trained" like this before- but they have been awesome. We make a lot of try hard noises during the workouts and we're sore for several days afterwards, but we're feeling strong! More to come on this in a later post. Maybe I'll even post a video of us working out on Instagram (ksuesbackpacks), if I can figure out how to do a video.

We've been continuing to do training hikes as well as going to the Red. They all contribute to our base fitness and have helped with continued test driving of our gear. At this point, we're all set! I even got to try out my rain pants a couple weeks ago when we got rained on at Lapham Peak! They were great!



Other things we're continuing to do to prep- reading! Blogs and backpacking articles and a big thank you to Grant from my work for lending me these books for Montana and Wyoming! Can't wait to dig in and read them...just need to find the time!