Seven years ago, I lost my best friend to ALS. We were both godfathers to each others youngest daughters, and I’ve remained close to his family. His wife had met a new love and called to tell me she was getting married and wanted me to be in the wedding. I said “great, I’d love to come to Maine” (where they live), but she said the wedding was going to be in Jackson Hole, WY. I said “great, I’d love to run in Wyoming”.

We started making mental plans of where we would go and where we would run and then our niece informed the family that she was 4 months pregnant and had not told anyone because she had some complications early on and wanted to wait until she was doing better. She lives in Salt Lake City and now a visit to see our grandniece was fit into our plans.

Flash forward a few months and we landed in Salt Lake. We had a great visit with baby Marvel (they’re comic fans) and made our way for a stop in Park City, UT. I has skied at Park City and knew there were some trails that I wanted to explore.

Me and baby Marvel

DW and I got up very early on day 2 (since our bodies were still on East Coast Time) and headed to the trails. We had a trail map, but were having trouble finding the start until we saw a man running up along one of the ski lifts. Once we had our bearings, we headed up the trails to the top of the mountain. Beautiful run up along the Aspen trees in some light rain. We crossed the ski slopes over and over and mostly stayed on single track trails that wound our way up to the top of Park City. On the way we saw some mule deer and heard a lot or noise from some moose. We got to the top of City Lift and could not see a thing due to the cloud cover so we headed back down. Half way down as the trail turned left a bit something moved just off the left side of the trail. Then it stood up and I was 3 feet away from a 7’ tall bull moose. My first thought was “wow, how cool”. My second thought was “I should probably back away”. DW came up and I warned her to slow down and we snapped this picture.

Bullwinkle - He was at least 7' at the shoulders.

Trails of Park City

From Park City, we made our way to Jackson Hole for a few days and a Tuesday wedding. We had a long flat run along a bike trail connecting the town or Jackson Hole to Jackson Hole Resort. We saw many pronghorns and a few mule deer during the run. We also had a run up the Jackson Hole Ski trails. Clouds were low (or we were high up) and we didn’t really get to see anything during the middle miles.

The wedding was great and we had some awesome food at the Teton Pines Country Club for the reception and I danced too much in cowboy boots and ate too much. The day after the wedding there was a brunch at Jackson Lake Lodge, so we made our plans to stay in the Tetons for the next few days and chose Signal Mountain Lodge (thanks to suggestions from George and NH).

My beautiful goddaughter and I, goofing off in the photo booth.

I had posted about runs in the Tetons and received many good suggestions. Our first run was around Jenny Lake and up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point and then along Cascade Canyon Trail. The first mile of the run was crowded, so we power hiked around people until we could run easily. We had a great 3 miles until we hit a crowd of people who had taken a boat across Jenny Lake to see Hidden Falls. People where all over the trials walking in sandals and not prepared for hiking up the climb to Inspiration Point. DW and I followed in the conga line up to the point and it was funny how “we” looked out of place in our trail shoes and packs. After a bit, we lost contact with the crowds and were able to have a peaceful run through the canyon. However, this was an out and back run, and we had to deal with the “boat people” on the return.

Grand Teton and Jenny Lake

Hidden Falls.

Cascade Canyon Trail, above Jenny Lake.

Next we spend the day driving and hiking in Yellowstone. Due to some road closures, we had to drive 60 extra miles to get to the Upper Geyser basin to see Old Faithful. We hiked over 13 miles and spent 12 beautiful hours touring Yellowstone.

Excelsior Geyser at Middle Geyser Basin, Yellowstone.

Our second to last day in the Tetons and we decided to skip our planned Paintbrush Canyon run because of the crowds and took a suggestion from our waiter (a hiker) and went drove to Two Oceans trailhead for a 15 mile run around Two Oceans Lake, Grand View Point and Emma Matilda Lake. We were warned that this area did not see too much traffic and to watch for bears. This run ended up being one of my top 5 runs ever. Spectacular views, great single track trail and awesome weather, plus a huge climb up to Grand View. We even saw a bear (running away from us). In over 3.5 hours, we saw a total of 2 people on the trail.

Two Ocean Lake - It sits on the Continental Divide, so flows both west and east.

Single track through the Aspens

DW cresting Grand View

More single track heading to Emma Matilda Lake

Our last run was 6 miles up to the top of Signal Mountain. We didn’t see any wildlife or people until we got to the top where you could drive in. It was drizzling and cool, but it was on our list, so we finished our tour of the Teton.

View from our porch at Signal Mountain Lodge

All and all a great trip. I drank many local beers, went to some touristy places and had an awesome time touring the Tetons and Yellowstone. Back in Salt Lake City, we had another visit with baby Marvel and got to experience some flooding., and avoided being converted to Mormonism.

Thank for all the input on where to stay and run. Signal Mountain Lodge was a great stay. No TV’s allowed in any room in the Tetons and we had WiFi only in the main lodge. That was nice since we sat outside and watched the stars over the Teton Range and played cards and read books. It was nice to be unplugged for several days.

Our evening "TV", not bad reception

Wonderful story and pictures!

That is nice, what a moose!!!!

Lace - I would loved to have hooked up with you to run in the Wasatch Mountains.  I can see why you moved.

 

Watoni and runtraildc - Thanks.  Enjoyed the trip, but always nice to be home.

 

LB2 - I showed the picture to a guide when we were at the No Name Saloon, and he said it was probably around 1200 pounds.  I was totally stunned when it was fully standing and I was looking up at it (I'm 6' tall).  His head never directly faced me, but he looked toward my feet with his right eye.  I don't know if that was intentional or not.

Yeah, you should have got in touch. I could have showed you a few cool spots.

My pacer and I ran into a pair of bull moose while running the Wasatch 100 at night. At the most, they were 40 feet away from us. That was a pretty tense situation as we tried to get around them. Those things are enormous! It's pretty common to see them on our runs but I never get used to it.

That sounds like a great trip.

Thanks for sharing.

looks like a great trip, when you moving?

With kids scatters all over the country, maybe Wyoming would be a good place to settle down. 

I'd move for the beer.  Snake River Lager (Jackson, WY) and Moose Drool (from Missoula, MT) were two of my favorites.

Looks and sounds like a very nice trip. Cute baby, great trails, awesome hotel, majestic mountains, and unplugged recreation. What more is there to wish for?

Thanks for sharing, and all the wonderful pictures!

Great pics. Brings back a lot of memories. Cascade Canyon was one of my favorite hikes. I'm also glad and relieved that you liked Signal Mountain Lodge. It was so long ago when I stayed there, I wasn't sure it would still be the same or as good.