Camping at Colter Bay

 I was determined to find a time to go camping this year.  The kids love camping and even though we don't do it very often, they often mention it as one of their favorite things to do as a family.  I wanted to camp at Jenny Lake but I knew it was a long shot.  Grand Teton National Park is SO crowded this year more than others.  So I've heard.  This is the first year that I've spent much time in GTNP.  But from what I heard, Jenny Lake fills up really fast.  I set aside the only free days we had in July for camping.  We headed up on a Sunday morning which should be the least busy day of the week.  Most people would be leaving the park on Sundays.  We left around 7am and when we got to the gate it said that Jenny Lake as full already.  So we headed to Colter Bay, which was my next choice.  We got to Colter Bay about 10 (it's quite a bit further into the park) and we got in the line to find a campsite.  There were tons of cars and campers/trailers in front of us.  And we didn't move very quickly.  We ended up in that line for an hour at least.

It was kind of cool though, on the drive we were talking about seeing wildlife and Ryan mentioned that he has never seen a bear in the wild.  I had not either, though Sherri had just seen one at the Darby Wind Caves hike.  Less than 10 minutes later we were in line in the car with people and cars everywhere and Dylan says, "bear! Bear bear bear!"  We totally thought he was pulling our chains.  Then I looked out the passenger window and sure enough, there was a bear walking right towards our car by Dylan's window, then went behind our car and crossed the road and kept walking.  So cool!  The rangers told us there had been a bear at the campsites the night before and reminded us to keep all our food or smelly stuff in our car or bear box to keep the bears away.

We finally got a campsite, one of the last ones.  We went and got set up, but it was getting hot fast.  So we went to find water.

We went to the water at Colter Bay, and caught some minnows!  It was beautiful.  I was wishing we had paddleboards because it looked really fun to be out in the water but none of us really wanted to swim (other than Kaden).

Then we decided to go explore somewhere else.  We were told String Lake and Leigh Lake were great options so we headed there.  Again, paddleboards would be awesome.  But it was just stunning!  Crowded, but still stunning.

Kaden was pretty tired and whiny.  He really just wanted to go back to the campsite, though I'm not sure what he was wanting to do because it was just hot with not much to do there other than eat chips, lol.  We started heading back and decided to stop at the dam.

Finally we did go back to the campsite and started working on dinner.  We could've cooked it better, haha.  We weren't patient enough to wait for the coals.  But the s'mores were on point!  Mosquitoes didn't come out until it got dark and I was already hiding in the tent reading and relaxing.  There was a bathroom right by our campsite with a sink and everything so that was nice.

We never really hang out too long in the mornings, but Ryan wanted to get back in cell service so he could do some work, so we packed up really quick.  It's not like there was anything we really wanted to do anyway.  There wasn't a lot of hiking/exploring options right by our campsite.  Just more campsites or the main area with stores and stuff.  Next time I think we will do the camping trip somewhere closer to home, and do a day trip to GTNP and bring some kayaks and paddleboards.