As we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary on August 1st, we look back on a lifetime of shared adventures—a journey that officially kicked off during our September 1981 honeymoon in the Grand Tetons.

That trail up to Lake Solitude set the tone for our marriage. Through broken backpack straps, wrong turns, misplaced camera filters, inflated lunch bills, and a couple of trail injuries, we learned early on how to laugh through the hiccups, take on steep climbs together, and savor the breathtaking views at the top.

Over the decades, our greatest adventure took a different form: raising our two wonderful sons and building a home filled with love and steady support. Today, with the boys grown, my husband entering a well-deserved retirement, and my transition into part-time work, we find ourselves standing at the edge of a familiar trail. The horizon has opened up once again, and our love for exploring the world together is as bright as ever.

To honor where it all began, here is an unfiltered glimpse into our very first big adventure as husband and wife—exactly as recorded in my original journal entry from Thursday, September 10, 1981.

 

I got up at 5:30 AM, showered and got Bill up at 6 AM, packed sandwiches, nuts, raisins, M&M’s, hot chocolate packets, and soup packets. We dressed warmly and put a complete change of cooler clothes in our backpacks.

We stopped in at the lodge for breakfast where it took 30 minutes for us to get our food (it took the waitress 15 minutes just to take our food order after bringing Bill’s coffee and juice). We got French toast which cost $2.65 for two slices! Bill’s juice was $1.25. We decided not to eat there again.

We got to the Jenny Lake boat dock about one minute before the boat departed. Perfect timing! We had a chilly ride across the lake. On the way over, I discovered we had only four shots left on our camera and no extra film! We decided we’d ask the first hikers we saw for film. You just don’t go hiking in the Tetons without film!

Almost immediately, we made a wrong turn on the trail and had to backtrack about a half mile. Finally, our long awaited trip up Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude began. We passed a rushing branch and climbed several switchbacks to reach the canyon floor. We saw a sign that said we’d traveled 1.2 miles, only 6 more miles to go! At Inspiration Point we had a fantastic view of Jenny Lake. We found the canyon trail to be very flat with steep rock canyon walls and lots evergreen trees. We saw talus and scree covering fields where there had been a rock avalanche. Walking through the green meadows with Cascade Creek running beside us and the tall bare mountain peaks to our sides, I felt like Heidi going to visit her grandfather.

Inspiration Point on the return trip

We met a family on the trail who had been camping in the Alaska Basin. We bought a roll of 24-exposure film from them for $5. They told us to watch for a moose just up the trail. And sure enough, we almost ran into the moose very soon afterward. Luckily for us, he didn’t seem to mind our presence at all. A little later we saw a huge ugly garter snake with beady eyes, big teeth and a long forked tongue. Or was it a python? I started running and didn’t stop for a long time!

 

We came to the trail fork 4.5 miles from the trailhead at Jenny Lake. We knew that from there the trail would be much steeper for our remaining 2.7-mile hike. We climbed, stopped, rested, climbed, stopped, and rested. Bill’s backpack strap broke so we stopped and jerry-rigged it back together. We ate a nectarine each during our last half mile.

At long last we climbed to a level ground and several hundred feet away we were able to catch our first glimpse of Lake Solitude. We turned around to see the incredible view of the Tetons. We saw a lot of other hikers and campers relaxing by the lake. We found a private area for lunch. We had two flattened sandwiches and Bill made us chicken and rice soup and hot chocolate! We had to put our jackets back on and the warm food was perfect.

 

After our relaxing lunch we walked to the opposite side of the lake for the best view. We climbed to the top of a cliff and took pictures of the Grand Teton with Lake Solitude in the foreground. We stopped at Cascade Creek just below the lake to fill our canteen for the journey back.

 

While bending over the creek, Bill dropped our polarizing filter out of his shirt pocket. It landed in the water not to be found by us again.

We saw a really nice girl leading her horse up the mountain. We spoke to her and later saw her talking to an older couple (she had gone up, come back down, and just passed us). The older man and woman were in excellent shape, but had not gone all of the way to the lake. They gave us fresh spring water that they said the ranger said was the best in the world. It quenched our thirst so we thought it was great, too!

We stopped in at Hidden Falls before returning to the boat dock at Jenny Lake. We arrived at the dock just as the boat was pulling up. Perfect timing once again! We’d spent 9-½ hours on the trail and completed 14.4 miles (not counting going on the wrong trail and walking around the lake). The boat was crowded with sweaty people, all tired from hiking.

We drove back to Signal Mountain Lodge, bought a bunch of postcards, canned spaghetti, and Diet Dr. Peppers. We showered and went to a picnic table at the Chapel of the Sacred Heart for our dinner. I was still paranoid about “grissly barres.”

We went back to our cabin and wrote several postcards before going to bed. My leg was killing me, but I soon found a comfortable position and fell into a sound sleep. Bill was not so lucky. He had started sniffling on our way back to the lodge and was up much of the night because he couldn’t breathe; however, he felt much better the following morning.

 

Questions:

  • • What’s your favorite ‘everything went wrong, but we loved it anyway’ travel memory?
  • • Have you ever hiked in the Tetons—or had a trail mishap of your own? ~ When we lived in northern Utah, the Tetons were an easy day trip so we’d occasionally drive up for a day of hiking.
  • • Do you have an old journal entry or photo that always brings back fond memories? ~ We love looking back over our old journal entries from our cross-country road trips during the early days of our marriage!