dear steve and clair: thank you very much for getting hitched in wyoming!aaron and i managed to make a long weekend out of itbopping around grand teton natl park (2 oceans lake loop)the marmot was sometimes cooperative about posing for photo opsbut not always….better to catch her when she’s not lookingthen we picked up our buddy jack!jack had some crazy idea about running some teton crest trail and carrying all our snacks with us.  i wasn’t sure jack realized how many snacks a marmot ate.but we followed our fearless leader nonethelessand posed for his picturesand really posed for his pictureseven when we didn’t know he was taking themman we’re good! notice the synchronized running posingbecause it was such a beautiful runand we were so very content, running with eagles overhead and wildflowers afootand looking for fluffiesfound one! (we tallied 28 yellow-bellied marmots, including the rare melanistic black marmots found only in the tetons)and did i mention the wildflowers?and the views!that i didn’t even grumble when we made a wrong turn and ended up having to climb 3000 ft up to a freezing cold 11,000′ peak that looked like mordor (aaron didn’t think he’d done a climb like that since hope’s pass at leadville)but at the top we actually got to look down on the other mountainsand then we got to run downhill!and finally got back on trackjack was very happy about thisapparently so was Godthat when we got to sunset lake, after 6pm with hardly any water left and another sizable climb and 10+ miles to go, polish-canadian water fairies filled our bladders with filtered water.  for the first time all day we could stop rationing water.  dear little water fairies, we will never forget your kindness!the race against the approaching darkness begins!but didn’t stop us from taking more pictureswe are totally going to regret taking these pictures an hour from now when we’re running in the pitch black in grizzly country. but the cascades were so prettyas dusk fell the critters started coming out (like this exceedingly friendly little red fox who began ambling towards us after this photo was snapped)by the time we got to jenny lake it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand. fortunately aaron brought a light. 3 people, 1 light.  the light didn’t keep my left thigh and reproductive organs from being gauged by a dead pine tree that had fallen into the trail, directly into the headlamp’s blind spot.  but it finally got us to the jenny lake parking lot. best adventure ever!
Jack’s family scooped us up in the Jenny Lake parking lot.  Jack’s wife and kids must be awfully used to his trail running shenanigans, because they were relatively unfazed by the fact that it was 9:45pm, pitch black, we were hours beyond when we said we’d arrive (we did manage to text them from the trail and give some heads up).  And they had pizza and beer for us!
