We had a wonderful four-day weekend camping in the Grand Teton National Park. We left on Friday, 17 June and returned yesterday afternoon. I think my brain is still wandering around somewhere in the park! Since getting back I’ve been working on the web log software. The last upgrade disabled the ability to upload pictures and getting most of that fixed took a whole bunch of the evening. I’ve got a number of pictures, so perhaps tomorrow night I can get some of them uploaded.

As said, we left Friday morning. Since it had been a while since we had used the motor home, getting everything hooked up and ready to leave was a bit of a challenge. As it turns out, I still didn’t get everything right. More on that later…. We drove up through Idaho Falls, then east through Swan Valley and up over the pass through Victor and down into Jackson Hole. It was a long, slow climb up the hill, but it’s a beautiful drive. We got to the campground at Colter Bay about 3 in the afternoon and began unhooking and setting up camp. The first problem was the Tracker, which was being towed behind the motor home, wouldn’t drive forward. I had put the transmission into neutral, but had not put the transfer case into neutral. So, I towed the Tracker a couple of hundred miles not completely out of gear and lost Drive and 2nd. Reverse and Low still worked, but that wasn’t enough gears for driving around the park. We ended up leaving the Tracker in the campground to mark our spot while we drove the motor home everyplace. That actually didn’t turn out too badly. The vehicle is only about 23 or 24 feet long and fits into most normal parking spots. It was nice having everything with us as we drove around visiting places and it was very comfortable for Bradica (the dog). In hindsight, we could have left the Tracker home and then moved to different campgrounds each night as we toured. Next time we’ll have to consider that option.

We spent Friday and Saturday going around the park and seeing all of the sights. The mountains are very impressive and we had a great time. Each day we were back at the campground around six and spent the rest of the evening at the campsite and just relaxing. Nina got a lot of letters put into order and into plastic sleeves. She had a great time reading me excerpts from letters back in the 1960’s when we were in Japan for the first time. Sunday morning we attended the morning Sacrament Meeting of the Jackson Lodge Summer Branch. There were quite a few people there and we had a very nice service. They picked people out of the congregation to say the prayers and administer and pass the sacrament. I was asked to help bless which was a nice experience. I think the last time I did that was about ten years ago. The speakers were a High Councilor from the Driggs Idaho Stake and a recently returned missionary. The branch as well as the ward in Jackson Hole are part of the Driggs Idaho Stake, something that I didn’t know. The branch holds a Sacrament Meeting on Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. and then a full block of meetings Sunday evening starting at 5:45 p.m. Nina suggested that the late afternoon block was to accommodate the members working in the Park and the morning session was to appease us tourists.

Sunday afternoon we took a very pleasant drive around the southern loop in Yellowstone — Fishing Bridge, Canyon, Norris, Old Faithful, and back to our campground. Monday morning we slept in, cleaned up the motorhome, hooked everything up (the right way this time, but too late), and drove back home. On the way back we went through Jackson and followed the Snake River through Hobart Junction, Alpine, past the large Palisades Reservoir, through Swan Lake, Idaho Falls, and back to Pocatello. We stopped for lunch at a Wendy’s in Idaho Falls and I called a transmission shop in Pocatello and made arrangements to drop the Tracker off there on our way home. Sometime in the next day or so they’ll call and let me know how much damage I did. I can wait….

So, we’re back home. We had a very nice break from everything. My workday started with a 7:00 a.m. meeting, so it was right back into the daily routine. Nina drove down to Salt Lake to meet up with Heather for a few hours. We’ve vacationed. We’re back (at least physically).