Jump naked in a mountain lake. Hitchhike back to our car after realizing the trail isn’t actually a loop. Walk around the campground each morning in a bathrobe and cowboy hat. Hear bald eagles screech at one another. Watch horses be driven from one pasture to another while munching on your overpriced but decent fish and chips. And best of all, spend a solid week with your best friend/lover/rock star wife hardly ever being more than a few feet from one another (and I don’t even mind now her insisting that we use the small tent).

It’s not all idyllic. Over the past week there have been not one, but two high speed chases within the park boundary. One involved two idiots from California drag racing. The other was an alleged attempted murder in Yellowstone followed by a stolen car which possibly reached speeds in excess of 100 mph while being chased by park police down into GTNP. Corey and I also witnessed a shootout in Jackson but I’m pretty sure they were just actors. I mean, who wears a microphone during a shootout?

We by the way have been passing out IPAs like boxes of cigarettes in a prison. Yesterday alone I passed out four beers. Three to the nice family who drove us from the Lupine Meadows parking area to the Bradley Taggart jump off point. Saved us a gruelling five mile walk at the end of a challenging trail. Lessons learned are that people are kind and also that All Trails is not infallible. A couple hours later a man offered me an almost completely filled Jet Boil canister (he was flying home the next day). And that my friend earned him an IPA.

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We also woke up to a mostly flat tire. The kind folks working at Colter Bay gave us good advice. And then at Jackson Lodge Quentin, who does not drink beer or kombucha, professionally patched everything up. It was one of those things that could have broken in either direction. Luckily it went our way.