Monday, August 11, 2008

So much done, so little blogging time

Since leaving Jackson, WY on Aug 3rd, we headed back to the Tetons for most of that week. Camping at Jenny Lake is great for the number of hiking trailheads in the area, not to mention the great views of the Tetons. Getting a site means arriving before 7am and hanging around until people look like they're awake. It's first come, first served, tent only camping with about 50 spots. It's like the first day at a sale when they let people in to get a site. Given that we're on the "up at daylight - asleep by dark" schedule, it wasn't too hard. We stayed for 3 nights. After the second night and hiking most of the local Teton trails, I took a day to head back to Yellowstone to catch the parts I'd missed before meeting up with Shawn and Cal. I decided to take the KTM for the 200 mile round trip, for the fun roads and better gas mileage. The forecast was for afternoon rain so I took the waterproof jacket. It was well used later that afternoon, but thankfully only on the ride back to the Tetons. The amazing geysers and other thermal features were well worth the 200 mile ride.
Thursday morning after the rain we set our various equipment out to dry and started packing up for another day of travel. Heading off toward Bear Lake, UT the plan was to get there before the weekend so we could convince someone with a sailboat to let us crew for them. Thursday night was spent at a motel in Alpine, WY due mainly to Shawn's desire to avoid another night in the rain. For me, it makes little difference as the truck stays dry no matter what the weather does. That got us into Garden city, UT (one of the towns on Bear Lake) around 3pm on Friday afternoon, just in time to hit the marina and then go to the Raspberry Festival that was in town.
Arriving at the marina by bicycle was a great advantage. No only was the traffic through town congested due to the festival but aparently cars are charged an entrance fee that we easily avoided. Wandering down amongst the docks we found a single sailboat with activity. Owners Gary and Mary were quite friendly and told us there was going to be a regatta Saturday afternoon and if we came to the Skipper's meeting we could probably get a ride, maybe even with them if some of their crew didn't show. The rest of Friday evening was spent at the local festival, mostly like a fair.
Saturday morning we arrived early. I headed down to check in with Gary and Mary who immediately asked if I wanted to crew for them. I hooked Shawn up with the Bill in the boat next to Gary's and we were off - even the better to be on competing boats. These were very nice 35' sloops with racing sails and full spinnakers, best crewed with at least 6 people during a race. Although "Ricochet" the boat I was on was faster than the others, we only had 4 crew and also had a large handicap due to its equipment. The result was 3 hours of fun, sun and new friends. After the race Bill invited us to dinner with his family, which we gratefully and readily accepted. The rest of the evening was filled with great conversation, food and wine with Bill, his wife Megan and the kids Katie and Will.
Bill & Megan were kind enough to let us stay in their guest cabin so we were able to hang out with them all day Sunday as well. We played on all manner of water toys, the most frustrating of which was the sailboard. I learned that it is definitely not like riding a bike. When I lived in Adelaide back in 1995 it took me four days to work out how to avoid falling off my own sailboard. This time 4 hours didn't help with anything but sunburn. That night we headed back up to the summit of Garden City to camp. Monday morning I headed off into the dirt trails nearby for a few hours of motorcycle playing before meeting Shawn at WoodCamp Campground in Logan Canyon for hiking up to the Jardine Juniper - a 2000 yr old Juniper Tree. The summit had awesome long distance views.

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