Back from Iowa

It has been a while, but I got distracted.

After Ft. Robinson, we headed toward Grand Teton National Park. We spent Wednesday night, 19 July, at the KOA in Dubois, WY (pronounced “du-boy”). Note I am leaving in some pronunciations for my own future use since I kept forgetting! At the KOA I almost got assaulted. I had the audacity to tell someone to not walk through our site to get to the pool. Note there was an empty site right next to us that would have required the offender to walk at least 10′ farther. The adult man’s father (around my age) came screaming up to me and waved a fist in my face for being so rude. SMH! Luckily a staff member was driving by in the golf cart and intervened. The rude people left my site, and the staff member said they wouldn’t bother me again. They didn’t.

The next morning we left fairly early to move to Gros Ventre (“grah-vaunt”) campground in GTNP. We were there at 10:00 and got a nice site with shade. It was plenty big for our trailer with the truck parked next to us. We thought of trying for an electric site (they take a new wait list for them each morning), but it seemed like a bad use of money. It was much less expensive to use some gas in the generator than pay the electrical fee. I figured there were a lot of people who didn’t have the ability to dry camp for very long, so we left the electric sites for them.

Kevin’s back pain was really bothering him. I did all the driving from Carney on, and he still wasn’t getting better. We found an Urgent Care site in Jackson to concur there wasn’t anything really bad and get some muscle relaxants. He also ended up with a couple of rounds of massage therapy and some time in the hot tub at the local recreation center. The combination finally started some improvement, but I still did almost all the driving.

Is it time for the mandatory park pictures?

An elk wandered through the campground.
Mandatory picture of the Tetons.
Absolutely incredible wildflowers were everywhere.
Trust me, that is a big bull moose along the Gros Ventre River a couple of miles from the campground.
The sun coming through the clouds.

We ended up staying a bit more than a week. The campground only costs $14.50/night with a Senior Pass and had a 2 dot Verizon signal which kept us up to date with the world. A few days we drove around the park and even went to Yellowstone’s south east side. We had never spent much time in that area, so it was a good trip. Other days we just stayed around the campground, just relaxing. We came home on Friday, 28 July, a relatively easy drive. Kevin is still getting massage therapy here in SLC, and it is definitely helping both his back and his knee.

While we were gone on this long trip, I figured out how easily I get bored. I really need to bring more sewing with me. I finished two quilt tops that had been partially completed before we left, and I wanted to do more sewing. There is only so much sight seeing and reading I can do! Look at the next post to see the quilting results.