Vandrea Does America: Day 32 (Sunday 7/22/12)- Alta, WY

Today we crossed from Idaho Falls, ID into Alta, Wyoming. Teton Canyon and its campgrounds were our destination. The road into them is bumpy, but the campgrounds are nice, though primitive. The morning started out with sunshine flanked by blue sky. While I enjoyed scrapbooking, Isaiah took a swim in the creek. Yet the fun did not last the day. Sometime after noon the sky took a turn towards dark gray and we scurried to save scrapbook pages and the Wyoming map from getting soaked. Another smart move was gathering up all the left over firewood from the campers before us and storing it safely under our tarp. Most of the day was spent hunkered down in the van listening to the menace of thunder and watching lightening streak the sky.

In the early evening the storm had passed and we able to venture out once again. Before the trip we had every intention of doing a campout with someone who could teach us some outdoor skills, namely how to start a fire. In our busy preparations and excitement to leave this never happened. We decided to attempt a campfire in the Tetons anyway just for the experience and the potential of real cooked food.
When we determined the campsite next to us wasn't carrying a vendetta for our taking wood from their camp (they had a pickup bed full of wood, so our hoarded scrap wood was from the previous campers) we made friends of them and they made campers of us. While Isaiah was working on a boyscout twig tepee type system for the fire the neighbor, being, as we were to find out, a safety expert, ran over and doused the shy and small flame..with lighter fluid. That did the trick. We had thought that cheating, but he being also an ex military man and fire fighter, why question his methods.

He then not only lent us his axe but taught us proper form. It turns out that Isaiah and I did a decent job of chopping though we didn't end up making much more than kindling in the end. (If you scoff at the picture, the expert woodsman gave the log a dozen thwacks, and the equivalent of a wwf body slam, before advising us we should just throw the whole trunk in). The couple was lovely and from Idaho Falls. We were lucky and they were kind. In the end he gave us the gloves off his own fingers. It was a really great experience to be able to keep the fire burning on our own and cook noodles, hashbrowns and smores over the open fire. We had such a warm fire blazing that we were able to share embers with another camper who had forgotten his lighter.

If again you are scoffing at the pictures, I should clarify they were taking during the fire's infancy. It lived for 6 hours before we smothered it with water. In that time it ate up 4 logs of the size seen in the photos.
We enjoyed the rest of the evening in front of the fire and under the stars. Since the thunder and lightning storm had been so unpredictable we stayed in the van for the night.