Off to Washington

Yesterday, the morning hours before going to work were spent entirely preparing for today's drive to WA to spend Harmony's birthday with her. It seems like we are packing enough stuff for at least a one week stay when we are only staying the one day, then driving back. The total driving time will amount to about 30 hours which is normally ludicrous. This is for a good cause, though.

It's almost 5 AM, so we will pack the remaining few items and hit the road. See ya from WA tomorrow AM...

Lunch With Friends

We had our scheduled lunch yesterday with our friends from the KOA south of Jackson. Roxie and Terry are a couple we met during the Spring Training games this year and have remained in contact with since then. We chose Cutty's Bar & Grill - a Philly grill known for their authentic Philly Cheese Steaks. All of us ordered the Philly Cheese Steaks and they are truly authentic. We were there from 11:30 AM until we left shortly after 1 PM. Here is a shot of our group at our table:

We were shocked to find out that they were leaving the KOA today as a result of management changes at the campground and problems that have resulted from those changes. They are heading to Red Lodge MT today for a vacation before heading south and eventually ending up again in AZ for the winter. It was a great time and we caught up on all of our workamping experiences over the last several years.

It was the same story at work last night as we sold out and were extremely busy for most of the night. We worked with Nicole - our manager Judy's daughter - for the first time since last year. Judy indicated that she was going to try to get through the rest of this season with the staff she currently has in place. The bad experiences with three new employees have soured her against attempting to hire any new employees for the remaining time left in the season. I guess that means overtime for any employees that are interested. We'll see how that goes.

The rains have arrived - all day yesterday for about .55" of rain - and the forecast is for more today and tomorrow. We need to prepare for our marathon drive to WA tomorrow, so we will go to the store for some traveling food and to gas up and be ready to leave at first light tomorrow AM. I expect to get the blog entry done before we leave, but it may be a short one...

Cache Creek Hike

We wanted to take a walk or a hike yesterday morning, so we chose a different location from the ones around town. There was one that we took last year - Cache Creek - that sounded like a good one for this time of year. The drive to the beginning of the trailhead was through the south part of Jackson and we arrived there shortly after 10 AM.

The trail is a steady climb for the first mile and we had forgotten how many bikes and dogs there were on this particular trail.

It was past the peak season for most of the wildflowers, but there were some late bloomers that we saw along the way. Starting with this Goatsbeard:

lots of Western Coneflowers, including this one with a bee walking around:

This Indian Paintbrush:

and lots of these berries that we believe are the poisonous Red Baneberry:

There were also many areas where it appeared like we were walking through a garden:

We also saw several different kinds of butterflies, this being one of them:

The total distance we hiked was only about 4 miles but the hike was fairly strenuous. As we approached the end of the trail, we walked on this nice "boardwalk" that ran along the creek to the end of the trailhead:

It was a good hike to take on a morning before going to work.

We had another super busy night at the front desk with lots of petty complaints and problems with the wi-fi, water faucets, room locations and you name it. We were again happy to see the shift end at 11 PM.

Today is our scheduled lunch with our friends - Roxie and Terry - from Spring Training that work at the KOA Campground south of Jackson. We are to meet at Cutty's restaurant where they have great Philly Cheesesteaks among other good sandwiches. Until tomorrow...

Changes at Work

The biggest news from yesterday was the fact that another of our young new hires - Rachel M - is gone. She has only been working for about a month and her first scheduled day of her work week this past week (Thursday) she didn't show up for work and didn't call. That's the second new hire that has left this way in the last three weeks. Where do these young people get their work ethics? That makes three new hires that we have gone through this season. The fact that we were scheduled with her on Saturdays and Sundays made our weekend a pleasant one. There is one of the current workers (Jackie) that will work a few extra hours on our weekend to help with the phones. Otherwise, we really don't need - and prefer not to have - a third person working our weekend shift with us.

We walked to the local Verizon store yesterday AM to have a discussion about our overage on the data usage on our phones. The last two months we have gone over our allowance by 2 GB and we wanted to find out the reasons. The culprit is our jetpack that we use as the hotspot. Evidently, there have been periods where the data usage is out of sight. We suspect the recent increase in computer games that Josie has been downloading and playing on her computer during our down time at home. We thought that once the games were downloaded they wouldn't be utilizing data streaming to play. Wrong. The special effects and video aspects of the games use huge chunks of data streaming, resulting in the overage. We will change the way the games are played and just use our smartphones to play and not the laptops.

It looks like the temperatures are warming up again into the mid 80's for today. There have been many days where we have had isolated thunderstorms the last week or two, so we hope that trend is shifting - especially since we have a long drive planned for later in the week...

Biking to Teton Village

We finally did our bike ride to Teton Village from Wilson. At 9:30 AM we loaded the bikes onto the Jeep and headed out. This time, there would be no distractions or detours. It was almost 10 AM by the time we got everything together and started our ride.

This was a mostly level ride with just a few small rises and we had beautiful weather for most of the ride. The pathway is similar to all the others in this area and runs along the main highway from Wilson to Teton Village:

As we approached Teton Village, there were some areas of farmland and ranches similar to this one:

 and all of the shots that included the mountains revealed the ski slopes and beauty of the surrounding area:

 

The pathway split at the entrance to the Village, so we went straight - past the Village - to see where the bike path ended. It was about another mile before the bike path ended at a nice creek that was still running pretty fast. This shot is of Josie as we stopped to drink some water and rest:

As we headed back to the path that went into the Village, we saw several paragliders that were coming off the top of the mountain and landing in the Village. Here is a shot of one of them that was about to land:

All of them had two people - the pilot and a passenger. Now, Josie wants to try that on her next birthday. I'll stay on the ground and take the pictures of that trip just as I did on the one she took in the balloon ride on her 50th birthday.

We stopped and walked around the village a little bit and had some lunch at the Cowboy Café where we had previously eaten. It is situated directly under the tram ride and we took this shot while having our lunch:

We noticed a huge, dark cloud coming in over the mountain as we were finishing up our lunch. The decision was to hurry and get out of town as quickly as possible so as not to get caught in a thunderstorm:

We made it back to the Jeep without having any rain, and the 16 mile round-trip ride, including lunch, ended at around 2 PM. Just as we arrived at the Jeep and were getting off our bikes, Josie's foot got caught on her peddle and this is how she ended her trip:

It was a great day to end our weekend off from work.

It's back to work today and we will have a short week as we are taking Wednesday off to travel to WA to visit Harmony on her 9th birthday. Most of our arrangements are finalized for that trip, so we are looking forward to seeing her next week...

Winging It

We had ambitious plans yesterday to go to Wilson and complete the ride on our bikes that was detoured a couple of weeks ago because of low tire inflation. I loaded the bikes onto the rear of the Jeep and we headed out to Wilson. On the way, we decided to get a couple lottery tickets before the ride, so we continued on to the Teton Pass that goes over the mountain and into Victor, ID where we buy our lottery tickets. We picked up our tickets and then decided to drive into Driggs, about 7 miles up the road - to locate a place to have some breakfast. We discovered a place called Providers (formerly called Mill Creek Grill) on the main street that looked inviting. It was also the kind of place where we could sit outside and enjoy the fine day:

We ordered our breakfast and the waitress somehow messed up my order and brought pancakes instead of the French Toast that I ordered. So, Josie started eating her breakfast croissant sandwich while I waited for my French Toast. The food was good and, overall, a pretty good choice. The main street in Driggs is very nice:

and we made one more stop at a nice outdoor clothing store across the street from the restaurant that we spotted while eating.

We began heading back to Wilson where we the starting point is located for our bike ride. Josie wanted to check out a location that was off the road before the Teton Pass began on the Idaho side, so we took the turnoff to Moose Creek Ranch. We had no idea this was the location of another dude ranch but it was a nice place that is also very close to Jackson on the Idaho side, or western side, of the Teton National Park.

We drove past the Ranch and to a trailhead that entered the Jedediah Smith Wilderness that straddled the border between Idaho and Wyoming:

It is another of the unbelievably beautiful trails that are available to enjoy in this area. It is a series of trails that take you into the Tetons from the west and join the trails that we have been hiking in the Park on the Wyoming side.

By this time, it was too late to start our bike ride so we postponed it again until - maybe - today. The skies were beginning to cloud up again anyway, so we came home and spent the rest of the afternoon in the fifth wheel. We have been tired most of the week so it was a good opportunity to rest up...

Birthday Celebration

It was kind of a low key celebration for Josie's Birthday yesterday. As a result of having to work in the afternoon, we will save the nice dinner for today. It was a nice surprise for her at work when we arrived at 3 PM and there was a cake waiting for her and a card signed by the whole staff. My picture of her and the cake didn't turn out so well so you will have to imagine how surprised she was. Another of the staff and good friend, Donna, gave her something she has wanted for awhile - a dog!

It's the best kind - doesn't shed, doesn't eat a lot, doesn't poop and doesn't need a babysitter when we go somewhere. What a nice thought. We have appropriately named the dog Jackson.

The only other activity was a trip to the grocery store in the AM and Josie also took a walk into town while I did some computer stuff. The weather has been a factor in our activity planning, but we hope to see that change today. At least the sun is shining this morning and the sky is clear.

We have talked about taking a short drive into Victor, ID to buy some lottery tickets, so that is part of our activity schedule for today. The restaurant where we plan to have dinner - Eleanor's -is the one across the street from the lodge that we recommend to many guests, but have never tried ourselves. It's always better when you can recommend a place where you have had experience in order to add some credibility to your description. With only one more day left in July, we have past the half-way point in our stay in Jackson this season...