Gorgeous Hiking

This morning we drove south along the western part of the main loop road.  We stopped at all of the turnouts for views and photos.  Took a short walk to lovely String Lake.  At Jenny Lake we were in luck and the summer boats that shuttle across the lake are still in service.  It's a 10-minute ride that drops off the passengers at the beginning of some nice trails.  The elevation at lake level is 6840 feet.  The trail we took, to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, was only a mile each way but it was pretty vertical, so a workout, and we were already sore, including our butts, from the whitewater rafting adventure.  We climbed 450 feet.  I have to admit I didn't make it quite to the top since the last short stretch was a narrow cliffside trail with no guardrail, giving me vertigo just looking at it.  Mark went up and I sat on a rock and enjoyed the view of Jenny Lake, the Teton range, and some beautiful foliage including aspens that have turned yellow.  I was also visited by a pika, a darling little critter.  Pika, you say, what is a pika?  Well, I'll be happy to tell you, in the words of a park publication:  PIkas are 6-8.5 inches long and look like guinea pigs, with short, rounded ears with white edges and no visible tail.  Members of the rabbit family, they are alpine farmers, living at elevations from 7,000 to 13,000 feet.  They gather plants and dry them as a farmer gaiters and dries hay.  The pika even moves the stacks as necessary to protect from wind and rain.  Some dried stacks weigh as much as fifty pounds.  The pika will rely on the stacked vegetation for winter forage, as they do not hibernate during the long, snowy mountain winters.  The pika I saw was in a rocky area with lots of large loose rocks (looked like a small landslide) for cover and warmth.

Another little critter we've been seeing is the "least chipmunk".  It's 6.5-8 inches long but thin compared to the round pika.  These chipmunks are busy gatherers, storing large quantities of food to eat during winter.  They are often seen with full cheeks containing food for storage: seeds, berries, insects and fungi.  One chipmunk may store 67,000 food items before wintering in burrows about 30 feet long.

It was cold when we started the hike but we were pretty hot by the time we finished.
We'd had enough hiking for one day so drove south and enjoyed the views, had a late lunch at Dornan's and back north to Signal Mountain Lodge.  We didn't see any large game animals during this drive.   We checked in with Tuna and then went to the lodge lobby to check email, work on our photos and blog (yes, we're behind, having too much fun sightseeing).   The lobby is the only place here where internet service is available.  We had planned to drive to the Signal Mountain Summit to see the sunset but got a late start and it was pretty dark when we got there but it was pretty anyway.  On the way back down we saw a mama deer with her fawn on the side of the road.  Signal Mountain Lodge is famous for their nachos (lots of comments about them on TripAdvisor) so we had some and they are indeed good.  An early night to bed with plans for an early outing in the morning.