Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, Part III

On Friday, we spent the day at Jackson lake. We rented a couple of stand up paddle boards and set about trying to use them. The Mandell family, especially K and A, took right too it. They had to sit down on the board a few times when their balance was in question, but not one of them went into the lake at all. 

 Jack was happy on shore building and playing. We were trying to talk him into trying the board.

 Here goes my first time. I fell in the lake 3 times in rapid succession. It's a lot harder than it looks to balance, especially because there were water skiing boats going by and creating waves. But I got better and took two turns where I stood up and paddled around without falling in. Unfortunately, no one seems to have gotten much in the way of pictures of that part. There are pictures of me starting out, and pictures of me falling in, but no pictures of my more successful runs...hmmm. I sense a conspiracy.

Here's one picture of me just getting to my feet the first time. I fell off just a few moments after that. 

 Mike didn't fair much better than I did and found himself all wet several times as well.

 There's me in the water swimming to my board after falling in the first time. It was cold to go in that way from dry to soaked!

It took a long time to convince Jack to ride not he board, and then he freaked out and I had to take him right back in. He was sure he was going to fall off and didn't trust mom (maybe for good reason admittedly because he saw me fall in several times). 

 Then, less than an hour later, he completely trusts Katelyn and has a great time paddling around...mom's feeling a little put out here...

 Look at that, we even got Grandma in the water.

Mike finally made it to his feet, for a few minutes.

In the afternoon, we made brats and polish sausage and had a late lunch/early dinner on the beach and then we all went on a river float trip.  The scenery was gorgeous and our guide and rower Reid was very knowledgeable.

 We saw bald eagles, osprey, beaver, merganser ducks (no idea how that's spelled), beavers, Canadian geese..all things that are hard to snap pictures of when you have to use the zoom and the boat's bobbing up and down. I have lots of blurry pics, but here are a couple that are better:

 The sunset was lovely and the temperature just great. Not to mention the scenery...

Tom waiting for us at the turn out and taking pictures. 

After that, we headed back to camp for some cleanup. The next morning, we packed up and headed for home. We drove to Ceour de 'Alane on Saturday and spent the night there. We came on Sunday, stopped for lunch and groceries, and arrived about 3 pm to home. It was a fun trip, but back to reality. We had time to unpack and start some laundry and that's about it. We both headed back to work on Monday morning and Jack headed off to his first YMCA summer camp. So far, he's really enjoying it. The themes are questionable--they don't really seem to focus much on the specific themes. It seems more like your generic preschool or day program, but he's playing and learning, and he likes it so that's good enough for me. We've also started Level 2 swimming lessons (learning to float) and soccer starts on Monday!