Hours later, I woke up to a bluebird sunshiny day. All rested up I went for a relaxing breakfast at the local bakery, The Bunnery. I read the paper and tried to decide what to do with my day. At the bar the night prior, I had heard about a hot springs that you could cross-country ski to and that sounded like a pretty good day. I decided to walk to the local cross-country ski store, Skinny Skis to get their opinion on the distance.
Inside, they were incredibly helpful and told me that the ski was pretty easy, but incredibly long and at this point in the day, I should have already left. Oops. They then recommended that I try a different ski to Huckleberry Hot Spring up in the Grand Teton National Park, which was much shorter and easy to get to. Grant had left me his park pass, so that I could drive to Big Sky through GTNP and Yellowstone NP so I was all set.
I drove the hour it took to get up there and put on my sweet new gloves I had bought at the Skinny Ski shop and headed out.
I met a few hikers on the trail who were just coming back and I got the DL on the springs. It turns out that there are several hot springs, not a single pool, so if one was full, just continue on the trail and there will be another one. I took the advice a skied on.
I got to the first set of pools and a group of college aged girls were getting up the courage to go in the first pool and a lone random dude was in the deeper pool. The vegetation levels in the pools that the sandwich guy I had spoke to about the springs as he made my to-go sammy were pretty high. This was apparently normal, which is why he liked to only go at night. I decided to move and find another set of pools.
On the way to the next set all of a sudden I looked up and there in front of me was a mamma moose and her calf. In my admiration of all the beauty around me, I had skied right up to them. I stopped. We stared at each other. I said, “Hi”. We stared some more as I took off my backpack and tried to find my phone to take a picture. I wasn’t really afraid, just calm. I knew I couldn’t out ski a moose, so I figured I’d just chill till she decided things were cool. A few moments later, she started to walk toward a tasty tree and start eating. I wasn’t a threat. Yay! I started skiing again.
When I told Grant the story later, he said I was lucky I was so small and non-threatening.
The next set of pools had a group of local ladies who were just chilling and drinking wine; and they invited me to join them as they were in a pretty large pool. The pool was located at the top of a series of waterfall pools and looked over the mountains toward where the sun was a few hours away from setting. It was too good of an offer to refuse.
The three girls were all good friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time and were having a bit of a reunion. We all laughed and talked about different things and enjoyed the cold wine that the snow kept chilled. We stayed until the sunset over the Teton Mountain Range, then it was time to go.
I skied back and went about finding me some dinner to feed the appetite I had worked up. I decided on the Silver Dollar Bar and Grill where I had some of their famous corn chowder, a salad, and New York gorgonzola linguine. It was all so crazy good. I figured I should eat all the beef/game I could since in Seattle I doubted I would get anything that good for a long time (as far as red meat goes).
Afterwards I decided to get dessert in the bar where I chatted up the bartender and my waiter when he got off. We discussed the merits of me leaving Jackson and moving on to Big Sky in Montana or Sun Valley in Idaho. They suggested neither since the snow was so much better in JH than anywhere else right then. I ended up closing down the bar with my new friends and then heading home. Yet another good day!
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