Now for something different, a bicycle ride. We hadn't even taken the bikes off the rack since we'd left Glacier. There is a nice bike path here, which we rode last year. It runs from the South Jenny Lake parking lot southward. Last year it only went as far as Moose. It now extends all the way to Jackson Hole, about 25 miles each way. We didn't do that much.
We could have picked a less windy day. It was a windward slog all the way to the main visitor center at Moose. At one of the parking overlooks on the way, we ran into a couple from Seattle touring on an F800GS and an F650GS twin, almost the same configuration as our bikes. The woman had had an F650 single like Ellen's until she took a test ride on the twin and wouldn't give it back. They were all loaded up for camping and had all the farkles.
While we were talking with them a pair of sandhill cranes flew over in the direction of Jenny Lake, calling as they went.
We stopped at Menor's Ferry, an historic store and ferry across the Snake River. The ferry is a reproduction of the original wooden reaction ferry, a catamaran with a large platform between the hulls. It runs along a cable that spans the river. There is a wheeled carriage that runs along the cable. From the ends of the carriage a long loop of rope runs to the ferry and around a capstan wheel. By turning the wheel, the ferryman can change the angle of the bows with respect to the river. The flow of the river provides the power to drive the ferry to the bank towards which the bows are angled.
Last year the ferry wasn't running as it had been sunk at launching and was sitting against the southern bank when we were there. This year it was running and I took a round-trip on it. The ranger, who acts as the ferryman, explained last year's sinking. He also maintains the ferry, so he was intimately familiar with the event.
The ferry is a flat-bottomed, carvel-planked, wooden boat. Each year they take it out of the water for the winter. each spring they caulk the seams with cotton batting (they also back it up with caulk, but we're not supposed to know that), put it in the water and let the seams and wood swell until it stops leaking, running bilge pumps all the while (standard wooden boat stuff). Well, last year one hull swelled nicely, but the other one kept filling with water, so much that the pump couldn't keep up and its battery died overnight. In attempt to reposition the boat to get the leaking hull higher, it got loose and zoomed across the river, crashed into the lower bank at an angle that filled the other hull. It sunk, trapped against the bank in the current, where it spent the entire summer, until the water level and flow in the river became low enough to pump the hulls out and take it out of the water.
This year they didn't make that mistake and it is a fun ride across the river, sometimes dodging the rafts and kayaks floating down the river.
After the ferry ride and a trip to the visitor center, it was time to ride back to Jenny Lake. The wind had picked up even more, but we were going with it, so the ride back was much easier.
We followed our ride with a tour, in Speedy, up the other side of the park, through the flats, stopping at each river overlook to see if there was anything flying or swimming. We did see the bison herd, several pronghorn, many horses grazing at the dude ranches on the flats and a pair of female moose at the Oxbow Bend.
We finished our travel day with a stop at the Colter Bay shower house. It was back to the campsitefor a pasta and sausage dinner and a last piece of blackberry pie with ice cream from the Trapper Grill.
Photos of the day
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