Jackson Hole - Day 6

Today's activity was snowmobiling in Grand Teton National Park and it has been Rod and Peter's favorite part of the trip so far!  We were picked up from our hotel at 7:45 am.  The weather was a balmy 0 when they picked us up and according to our guide it was great that we had a "warm" day for the trip.

Our guide's name was Zane.  So right off this morning I couldn't help but think of Tori and Matt's best friend, Zane, who passed away a few weeks ago.  This guy was young and full of life and it certainly made my heart a little sad to think of Zane being taken too soon.  To say that I thought of him several times today would be an understatement.  (This is all of the sappy stuff I am writing in the post)

The drive to the park took about an hour and was stunningly beautiful.  We pulled over to take pictures of Grand Teton and also a bison that was rooting around looking for food.  Once we got there, we did a pre-check of our machines to check for damage, signed away all liability to the company, and got ready to go.  It was crazy.. for $25 we did buy optional collision coverage to cover the snowmobile but it still had a $1,000 deductible!  These machines were pretty cool.  By far the greatest feature was heated grips.  The worked so good, I couldn't even leave mine on high the entire time!

Our guide was a native Jacksonian.  His family has been here for five generations.  He knew his way around this park.  We went about 50 miles and had a top speed of 45 mph.  We had rented 3 snowmobiles.  Tina rode with Peter for the majority of the time (although she did drive for a little bit so she could see what it was like).  All of the trip had amazing views.

We started off on the groomed well traveled off road trails.  Since there seemed to be a lot of people out, we detoured to some less traveled trails.  These were single lane snowmobile trails that were challenging.  They included lots of turn, twists, bumps and hills - both down and up.  At one point we reached a field of about 3 feet of snow that he pulled over and let us just play and have fun on the snowmobiles.  After the field, as we were headed back, he took us on fresh power that did not have any tracks.  He even had to have a talk with us before taking off about counter balance and to "always lean up hill."  After the last stop, we took off across the valley heading back and we were let loose to make our own way.  This trip up and back down the mountain was totally untraveled and the guide was literally making his own trail.   It was crazy fast (about 45 mph), bumpy, and lots of fun.  We totally got our money's worth and it wasn't just a "canned" tour!