The Grand Tetons

I always have to feature the dog somewhere, he's been such a trooper and friend, and we're all so thankful he's still alive! We took him for a swim in Cottonwood Creek, the stream that empties from Jenny Lake. A wet dog is a happy dog.

Grand Teton National Park is between Jackson and Yellowstone. The Tetons are some of the most dramatic mountains we've ever seen. They rise about 6,000 feet from the valley floor, and are very young mountains - they are cragged and rough and show very little evidence of the smoothing of weathering and erosion. We spent most of the day at Jenny Lake, one of a handful of lakes along the base of the mountains. Jackson Lake is just to the north and much larger.

Time to Fish

By now I'm sure you've figured out that if there's water, there will be a fisherman. Jenny Lake is a particular target of mine - on the same family motorhome trip from the 70s that took us to Jackson and Yellowstone, we fished Jenny Lake. I remember quite clearly renting a small boat with an outboard motor and trolling around the lake. My sister caught a boatload of fish and left the rest of us skunked. 30 years later I still have to prove I can pull a fish out of this lake.

We went to the boat dock where you can still rent a motorboat. Yep, A motorboat. They only have one. And someone else was using it.

So we jumped aboard the shuttle for the other side of the lake where I was sure the big ones awaited us.


At the other side of the lake we bushwhacked to the inlet of one of the larger streams. We walked out on the fallen tree you can see here and set up base camp on the tuft of grass. The water was freezing cold coming out of the stream, but Eric waded out anyway for a couple of minutes. Kevin then took a different route and found that if you avoided the stream water the lake itself was pretty warm. We all ended up at the edge of the sandbar waist deep in clear mountain water.

We were there for a couple of hours. Every once in awhile I could see a lake trout or brown cruising around, and there were large schools of 1" long young trout swimming around us.

Eric was the lucky one today. He was using a lure called a "Krocodile," yep, spelled with a K. He let it sink good and deep and hooked a beautiful 14" lake trout.

Eric did great, but his aunt still holds the family record.