Colter Bay

Happy birthday to Dennis Johnson! We saw Dennis and Cheryl last when we visited St. George in May. They are at their house in San Juan Capistrano now and have been most of the time since June. It looks very much like they’ll be making the move back to Southern California. Dennis says they are hoping to have a new motorhome by next summer so they can do some traveling again (probably with their Rogues friends).

We drove to Colter Bay this afternoon, partly to check out the RV camping there. Signs said to expect delays of 30 minutes for road construction. We were delayed by ten minutes heading north and not at all on our way south, so we were lucky.

The RV campsites are in a heavily wooded area with narrow roads, definitely not something we’d want to try with our Majestic. We decided to take a hike to Swan Lake and Heron Pond, near Colter Bay (which is a bay on Lake Jackson).

As usual, hikers were advised to “Be bear aware.” Bears will generally move away from an area if they are aware of humans, so the real trick is to make the bears “human aware.” I carry a whistle, so I blew it at intervals, and we kept our eyes open. We didn’t encounter any bears—just squirrels and ducks. Someone did show us photos he had just taken of a doe and fawn, but we didn’t actually see them, although we were on the lookout.

Both Swan Lake and Heron Pond are largely covered with lily pads, so there really isn’t much open water. It was still a pleasant hike. We walked a little over three miles in an hour and a half. For part of the hike we were walking along a low bluff overlooking Lake Jackson. We saw some colorful kayaks and other boats.

[photos later]

We stopped at Jackson Lodge to look for elk in the Willow Flats, but it was probably the wrong time of day. We didn’t see any.

We also didn’t see the magnificent mountains that rise up beyond the flats—only their silhouettes through the haze. Unfortunately, even though the NOAA forecasts do not include smoke for the next few days, we were told by a ranger that it takes a good rain to clear the air enough to see the mountains. She didn’t expect that the view would clear substantially before the end of the season. Sigh. At least this isn’t our only trip to Grand Teton National Park, so we have some great memories of the peaks.

On the way home we had two animal viewing opportunities. First we saw a large beaver at the edge of the Snake River, eating a pine branch. Then on the Gros Ventre Road we again saw bison crossing the road. Today the group was much larger, and we saw two small calves with their mothers.


Unfortunately, looking at the outside of our bedroom slideout today we saw a long scratch. Darn! The full body paint is less forgiving than fiberglass.

When we left after lunch, the state of charge was displayed as 79%. We left nothing turned on, and the afternoon was sunny. When we got home, the SOC was showing 75%, but the batteries were at 13.2 volts. We turned on the generator, and the BMK reported that the batteries were float charging. Obviously the BMK report of the SOC is not reliable again.