Emma Matilda Lake Hike

            Today, for my second day off I took another hike with Shane, GTLC’s awesome employee recreation director, and some other employees that had the day off. There were eight of us total on the hike. We decided to hike around Emma Matilda Lake, which is an absolutely beautiful place to view the reflection of the Tetons on the water. We all brought water and Shane gave us all packed lunches since we knew it’d be a long hike. It was about nine miles total, took almost five hours, and parts involved us having to hike through knee-deep snow, but the view of the lake was totally worth it. We also saw a group of elk pretty close up as well as some hawks and wolf tracks. Shane also told us that we were the first group to hike this trail this year, which was pretty cool.

            We left the employee village at ten, and returned, super tired, at almost three. I walked over to the back door of my dorm room, where my neighbor Jesse was hanging out. We got really lucky; our dorm room is one of the only ones to have a back door. In our dorm building, which has 22 rooms, only three of them have back doors, and some dorm buildings don’t have any. It’s nice to be able to get into our dorm room without having to go through the main hallway. Jesse and his roommate Mike have the room right next to us, which also has a back door, and we hang out on the back porch area in the evenings regularly. We’ve put a few chairs out there, as well as a picnic table.

            My hiking shoes were soaking wet from hiking through a lot of snow, so I left them out on the back porch to dry out and, after talking with Jesse for a while, went to shower. Cristina was done with her shift by the time I got back, and we both relaxed until about 5:30 when we walked over to the EDR with Jesse for dinner. Nate was working a few extra hours- apparently the managers accidentally didn’t schedule and front desk agents to work the evening shift today- but he walked in for his dinner break not long after we did, and we all sat together. We told Nate to come over and hang on our back patio with us when he was done with work.

            After hiking five miles yesterday and nine today, I’m pretty tired out and my legs are really sore, but I think I used this first “weekend” to my full advantage.