Monday, September 6, 2010

A Phase shift in departure


For most of our camping trips this summer, we left progressively later each day. I seem to recall we left near or even after 3 pm on our last trip to Ellis. That's LATE! We were bone tired by the time we got to camp at 6:30 pm that night and still faced a two hours rigging. I think we finally went to sleep about 10 pm that night. Give us a chance to procrastinate and we will.

Now along comes Jenny, Lake, that is. The campground is tiny in proportion to the usage of the Grand Teton National Park. It's a fly speck of a campground. It's first-come, first-served and in the summer people line up in the dark to get first chance at a vacancy. That's why we go the day after Labor Day. In our first two trips using this paradigm, we scored a site right away.

Here's the trick: Leave as early as you can get behind the wheel even if it's at or before 6 am. It takes about 3 hours to get to the campground entrance. Most campers generally start leaving right around 9 am and they peak of campers exiting generally occurs around 10 am. There may be some stragglers leaving after 10 am but you sure can't count on it at a campground like Jenny Lake.

Soooo....time has been on our side all summer--we've had the luxury to procrastinate at will and, well, we did. We even got good at it. Now, we don't have that luxury any more. We're forced into leaving at some ridiculous early hour of the morning if we hope to have a prayer of getting a campsite at Jenny Lake. That's just the way it is.

Anyway, when we go to bed tonight, everything will be fully rigged and ready to roll. The coolers will be packed tonight, bikes strapped in, you name it. All we have to do is carry our coffee over to the truck and rocket out of here, hopefully at 6 am.

It's a strange game this camping game.

The slideshow above is of our Jenny Lake Trip last year in 2009. Chances are whatever slideshow we put together this year will look just like last year's. The slide show below is of Menor's Ferry near Dornan's. The bottom slideshow does nto have captions. Some of you can't see these slide shows because you can't seem to get Adobe Flash to work. Click here for the 2009 camping trip photo album. And click here for the Menor's Ferry photos. Flash is not required when you click either or both of those links.

Cheers, jp

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