As soon as we got our bearings in Grand Teton National Park, we called to see if we could reserve a tent cabin in Colter Bay Village for Monday night. They had availability, which meant: we were staying in Grand Teton National Park!

As an aside: I should mention that the advanced-planning for this trip consisted of only three reservations: the flight from San Antonio to SLC on Sunday, June 14, the flight from Spokane, Washington to SFO on Sunday, June 21, and a car rental to span the week. Everything else was up to us to figure out as we went along.

I should probably also reiterate something that we learned during our first trip to France: it’s no fun to stay in a place for only one night at a time when we’re traveling. If we stay put for two nights, then our trip naturally breaks itself up into full days without the stress of packing and unpacking followed by half days of traveling.

By the time we wound our way through the park and up to Colter Bay Village, we’d decided to extend our reservation for two nights, so we could go hiking on Tuesday as long as we wanted without worrying about packing up and traveling that night. Thankfully they also had availability on Tuesday night (mid-June is still early season for the northern parks) so we used the rest of Monday to unpack, treat ourselves to a fancy dinner at the Colter Bay Ranch House, and fail miserably at lighting a fire in our tent cabin’s wood stove.