Sorry for the delay! Our internet has been a little shady through the mountains lately.
Today I worked out to the sunrise, cows moo-ing, and I think a donkey. The clouds were threatening to rain and making shapes and beams across the sky. We all got ready to go and headed out to Jenny Lake’s Visitor Center where we picked up more Junior Ranger packets (we have a lot of work to do!) and made a plan to ferry across the lake, hike to Hidden Falls and then hike the way back to the Visitor Center from the Falls. The ferry took a while to get onto—maybe 45 mins? They had four ferries running every 15 mins and about 25 people per ferry. They offered masks at the entrance which I thought was nice since it was close proximity (we had ours already). It was a short ride across and then a .5 mile to the falls—all uphill mostly “butt to nut” as Keith described. This was the hardest part because the girls were hungry and the uphill was difficult with a mask, so we eventually stopped off on a rock to eat the lunch we had packed. We made it to the falls (a rocky staircase of white mist and onlookers)…not so hidden after all. It felt more like a Disney attraction than something found in nature because the scale of things. It is interesting how I associate all these natural parks with Disney World’s fake version of each: thunder mountain, typhoon lagoons rapids, and the waterfalls on Splash Mountain (they might not have these anymore…showing my age).
It was all downhill from here (mostly literally). The 3.1 miles from the waterfall were along the edge of Jenny Lake with rocky shores, cliffs, and different kinds of trees and plants all in the shadows of sleeping giants. We did it and the girls did great. It started raining probably a mile from our destination on our way back. It was a light sprinkle and by the time we got to the car it was more of a thunderstorm, so we made great timing.
Things we did:
- Parked our car in the parking lot of Jenny Lake Visitor Center (which was a feat considering people were parked halfway down the road probably at least a mile away)
- Got our Junior Ranger Packets (the girls are working on them!)
- Saw Jenny Lake
- Saw the striking peaks surrounding Jenny Lake
- Took a ferry
- Hiked .5 miles to Hidden Falls
- Crossed Cascade Creek
- Hiked .5 miles to the trail head for the south part of Jenny Lake Trail
- Hiked the 2.6 miles to the Visitor Center along the edge of Jenny Lake
- Saw two bees in a huge clover flower
- Saw many flowers, berries, bugs, and bees
- Saw many (many) other hikers (This was much better on the longer hike after we were out of the mass attraction of the “Hidden” falls
- Walked in the rain
- Slipped on the rocks
- Took off our shoes (Anna and I did) and dipped our toes in the waters of Jenny Lake
As always: Make sure you wait for the photos and captions to load below! If the photos are too small and you want to zoom in don’t forget you can Cmd+/- on a Mac or Cntl+/- on a PC to zoom in/out your browser!
Thimble berries maybe? I like the wildflowers. I remember this place from our trip. Ryan taught his nephew and my cousin about navigation, we struggled during this hike, but halfway through we put our tired feet in freezing water and it all felt better. Then we saw a moose!