Jackson Hole - Sliding and Rafting

In Jackson we stayed in a condo on the property of the Snow King Resort in town. It was located at the base of a mountain and was centrally located to everything. The alpine slide was also on the property, but we never made it over to the slide until our last morning. Amelia and John loved the slide we went on last year in Steamboat so we knew they would be excited about another chance to ride.We took a chair lift up the mountain to the start of the track. This is the view of the Jackson Hole valley from the beginning of the track. The yellow seats towards the bottom of the photo are those on the chair lift as it ascends up the mountain. What a beautiful view on a gorgeous day!
A view of the track taken from the chair lift on our way up.

John and Amelia are getting ready to ride! These were taken on the chair lift going up the mountain.Amelia has our slide and is ready to go. Even though she was old enough to ride on her own, Amelia opted to ride with me this time. We agreed that this will be the last year for this as she is getting old enough to steer her own cart down the mountain.

I don't have any good photos of John and Scott going down the slide because of their accident, which is a whole other story altogether. It has been nearly two weeks since the fall and Scott's arm is just now beginning to look more normal, poor guy. He and my dad can someday trade war stories about their respective wipe outs on alpine slides.

After the slide, it was time for river rafting! the weather was just perfect for our two-hour float trip through the valley. Below our guide is getting the raft set up for launch. John and Scott appear to be supervising this process.

We all enjoyed our ride down the Snake River! Look at the beautiful scenery behind Scott. I love the contrast of the bright blue and green colors. You can see Scott's bandaged arm from the slide incident quite clearly.

We were lucky to have the whole boat to ourselves for our float trip. Normally this size of raft can accommodate 10 to 12 passengers, so it was quite spacious to have it all for us. Our guide, Morgan, was fantastic in his knowledge of the river, the valley, and he was great with the children. Given that we were the only ones on the boat we had Morgan's attention the entire ride, which was very satisfying to John as he could ask Morgan a million questions all afternoon long. Morgan even let the kids practice rowing the raft, which they thought was so much fun. Below Morgan is instructing John. At one point that afternoon, John asked Morgan, "Morgan, do you want me to come back and row so that you can take a break?"

Next it was Amelia's turn with the oars.

We saw five bald eagles as well as many other types of birds during our float trip. I opted to take my older, less powerful camera on the boat because I didn't want to get my good camera wet, so the zoom was not great for capturing the wildlife. This is my best shot of a bald eagle. The bird is sitting on a horizontal branch on the left side of the photo about half-way down, with a dark-colored body and white head.The big smiles in the photos below are descriptive of our feelings about the float trip as well as the trip to Jackson as a whole. The float trip was the perfect way to cap off a great vacation!