53 Miles in Teton National Park

Joseph and I had a milestone anniversary this year, celebrating 15 years (!), and we wanted to get away for an adventure together. Normally I would have been dying to run off to Hawaii or the Caribbean but we'd already done a tropical escape earlier in the year and with limited time to run away from our kiddos we chose to stay closer to home and head up to the Tetons in Wyoming for a long weekend. And it was such an amazing trip! I am already a huge fan of our National Parks and I feel like I grew up heading to the Tetons at least every other summer and I am still in love with that place.

We drove up late in the day Thursday and stayed at the Teton Mountain Lodge right on the hillside in Teton Village and about 2 minutes from the park. On Friday morning we woke up to find a beautiful fall day ahead of us. We ate breakfast at our hotel, packed lunches and snacks for the afternoon, geared up for a long day of cycling, and drove into the park and over to Wilson where we planned to start biking our loop around the park. The first 13 or 14 miles have a lovely, separately paved bike trail all the way up to Jenny Lake. From there we he had to ride on the road but being a random Friday in September there weren't many tourists zipping around.

As we approached the road after finishing the bike trail at Jenny Lake I wasn't paying close attention to Joseph riding beside me and I was unsure of a car behind us as we merged into the left turn lane and I suddenly got way too close to my hubby, my front tire hit his back tire, and I lost balance and fell over. I was scraped up from the road and knew my bike had moved on without me but I was really sad to find out my handlebars had gotten caught in his back wheel as I fell over and somehow, my bike was fine but the pressure of my bars in his wheel had totally damaged the seat stays on the back of his frame. They were both totally cracked and not in good shape. I felt so awful! Such a dumb crash and then to wreck a perfectly good (and very expensive) carbon frame. It kind of ruined the morning and I felt sick to my stomach. I thought for sure we would have to just head back to the car and ditch the rest of our riding plans but Joseph was very calm about it and said he'd just keep riding since the bike seemed to still handle fine. On we plugged. I fell in behind him and had my pity party for several miles. Luckily I had a huge bandage in my bike pack for my scraped up shin which helped a ton against the wind on it (but it only lasted an hour as my sweaty leg made it totally unsticky after a while...)

The valet at our hotel had suggested we head up to Signal Mountain Summit along our way since it was a good climb and offered pretty views of the park. Joseph was super excited about it so I rallied and up we went. It was gorgeous climbing through the forest and suddenly seeing grand views of Jackson Lake as we wound our way up higher and higher. After 3 miles of climbing it started to get pretty steep so I sent Joseph ahead — I'm a slower biker for sure. It was rough going the 2 more miles to the top but it was so pretty up there! Amazing views of the staggering peaks and so much of the park.

Then we rode back down the mountain and continued on around the park for another 35 miles past rivers, yellow aspens, towering pines trees and a herd of white tail antelope. It was a warm and sunny 65 degrees and Joseph was eager to jump in a lake or stream to cool off. He was all for stripping down to nothing and jumping in and I was not (too many layers to try and pull on over a wet body — does not work well on this girl body!) But I was definitely up for a cool dip in my biking clothes (triathlons teach us that they dry pretty fast right?) We found a lovely, clear pool off to the side of a small river and jumped (Joseph)/carefully waded (me) into the cold, cold water. It actually felt really good on my tired biking muscles and even the road rash on my leg.

 

 

 

As we rode I could tell I was getting more and more tired but I couldn't help but feel so much awe and joy to be out in the perfect fall sunshine with my favorite person doing something we both love — and in that spectacular, natural wonderland.

 

We finally made it back to Wilson after 50+ miles, helped ourselves to Diet Mountain Dew and vanilla soft serve, and drove back to our hotel for a quiet, deserted dip in the rooftop hot tub.

In the evening (finally showered and fresh!) we had dinner down the street at Calico out on the patio and then came back to our hotel to half-heartedly watch a movie (we were worn out and ready for bed before 10 pm :)