The Last Hurrah of 2025

 

In which the sun sets on Moominmama's adventures of 2025 with a return to two favorite hikes in the Tetons...

The Moominhouse is about to go into storage, and Moominmama will be doing only a little car camping en route to visits with the offspring and friends back east. Come winter, she will return to Colorado for some Nordic skiing until she can set forth again with her trailer home in the spring.

But I went out with a bang, hiking two favorite trails, one in Idaho on the west side of the Tetons and one in Grand Teton National Park on the Wyoming side. These were both memorable hikes that I first did in 2021. 

The photo above is of the Snake River in Idaho, where I had a beautiful campsite right on the river. It put me close to the Palisades Canyon trail, pictured to the left.

This is how the trail starts, with the canyon walls protecting you on either side. What you can't see here is the clear, tumbling Palisades Creek that runs alongside the trail up to Lower Palisades Lake, where the views open up. 

Unlike the last time I hiked this trail, I continued on to do the full seven miles up to the Upper Palisades Lake. And was that ever spectacular! 

On a hot day, that chilly water was welcome! Moominmama went for a swim (short) but cooled her tired legs and gained the stamina to hike the seven miles down.

I had the lake to myself and met only a couple of people on the way back down. That would be a dramatic difference from hiking Cascade Canyon in Grand Teton National Park. 

For that hike, I took the shuttle boat across Jenny Lake, and while many of the passengers only went as far as Inspiration Point on the other side, a group of us ended up setting out at about the same time up Cascade Canyon itself.

We ended up leapfrogging one another as we stopped to remove a layer or eat a snack. And a funny camaraderie developed, especially as we all ended up stopped on the path because of a moose. 

This female wasn't going to let a gaggle of hikers interrupt the pleasure of rubbing her face and neck against an aspen tree. But if the others hadn't pointed it out, I would have missed the male moose, with its big head of antlers, sitting back from the trail to the right and keeping an eye on the female. 

Needless to say, we weren't going to mess with either of them and ended up whispering together before, finally, a group broke off to bushwhack around to the left of the female.

To my mind, this is one of the most beautiful hikes to be found. And a perfect way to end the adventures of 2025. Most of you will see me soon, and I look forward to reconnecting with some of my favorite human animals over the coming months!




Location: Palisades, ID 83428, USA

Comments

  1. NMLSeptember 10, 2025 at 1:20 PM

    What beautiful scenery! Coming across the two moose must have been both thrilling and a bit scary. We hope we are on your human animal visitor’s list!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MoominmamasadventuresSeptember 12, 2025 at 12:32 PM

      You know it. I'll be in Rochester for a while but coming to NH in mid-October. Hope you're around then!

      Delete
    2. JeffoFittsSeptember 13, 2025 at 8:13 AM

      2nd’ing here on the welcome back to Rochester!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mount Whitney and Manzanar

Image
Wherein Moominmama hikes in the John Muir Wilderness and joins a ceremony where Japanese Americans declare "Never Again is Now"... Driving into the eastern Sierras is like arriving on a different planet from the sand and sagebrush below. At 10,000 to 11,000 feet, the air has a chill, there's snow on the mountaintops, and everything smells of ponderosa pine and moist earth. Even the bird calls are different. After a week in the valley, the mountains were calling, and Moominmama drove up to hike in the John Muir Wilderness, choosing a three-mile trail up Mount Whitney to Lone Pine Lake. The days had been warm, but I wasn't sure how much snow I'd find on the trail. As it turned out, I got a good 2.5 miles before I had to put on microspikes to navigate the snow, which was firmly packed down. What spectacular views! And fascinating plant life. This is manzanita, a bush with tiny teardrop flowers that will eventually turn into berries. It is related to a bush I'd se...
Read more

Moominmama at the Bay of Fundy

Image
In which Moominmama sees the amazing tides in the Bay of Fundy and slips on the ocean floor... The Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is famous for its tides with a hundred billion tons of water pouring in and out of the bay with each cycle. Water can rise at high tide by as much as 56 feet, and at Hopewell Rocks, pictured above, it averages around 46 feet at high tide. According to the Mi'kmaq legend, the giant Glooscap wanted to take a bath and got Beaver to build him a dam across the mouth of the bay. A whale took objection and slapped the dam down, sending water rushing into and out of the bay with a force so strong it continues to this day. Since it pours in at about 6-feet an hour, the bay fills quickly and can be dangerous. Visitors are allowed to walk on the "ocean floor" at low tide but the staircase is closed as the tide comes in. In fact, the lower levels of the stairs flood. Moominmama joined the crowds for low tide to explore the rock features...
Read more

Moominmama's Adventures: Year Five

Image
  In which Moominmama reflects on the start of a new year and what it means to reach Year Five of a life on the road... Starting on my fifth year on the road, Moominmama wonders if it's an adventure anymore, or just a lifestyle. Somehow, "Moominmama's Lifestyle" just doesn't have the same ring! But the truth is that not everything is new and exciting! Having picked up the trailer in New Mexico and driven to Arizona, I'm enjoying a Sonoran Desert that's actually somewhat familiar. I enjoy being back among the grandfather saguaro cactus, unique to this particular desert. The Sonoran Desert, unlike others, is marked by two rainy seasons: the summer monsoons and winter rains. But as I've learned, last year there were no significant monsoon rains in the Phoenix area, deepening an already serious drought. This year, no flowers greeted my March arrival. The plants were dry and dormant, and the local park ranger was taking photos of stressed-out saguaros on my...
Read more