Rain in Grand Teton
We were blessed with sunny, cloud-free skies from Santa Cruz to Salt Lake City, but when we pulled up to our campsite in Grand Teton it started to rain. Hard. As we unloaded gear into the bear box at the campsite we realized that if it kept raining this hard through the night the rain-fly on our tent wouldn’t be enough. We’d be sleeping in a puddle if we didn’t figure something else out.
In current #vanlife fashion we started putting everything, not just food, into the bear box to make room in the car for a sleeping set up. Our road trip SUV wasn’t a small car, but being 6’3” means you need all the room you can get. So after some time spent puzzling containers into the bear box and rigging a tarp to cover the things that didn’t fit we had just enough room in the car for me to sleep.
Despite the humidity and the cramped sleeping set up it felt perfectly cozy after a long day of driving and hiking in Grand Teton.
When we woke up I went to check on the gear that was left outside and found a few subtle clues that we’d had a visitor in the night: a fallen backpack, scratches on my duffle bag, and little pieces of fur clinging to a strap. Bear boxes really were necessary, after all.
