Today was day eleven, and it wasn’t very interesting. We spent it on the road, bought some groceries, and had dinner. Of course, everything doesn’t have to be fast-paced and exciting. I am actually really glad just to have some down time. I dozed off a bit while listening to Pandora, then read more Eragon, which I am enjoying very much.

But YESTERDAY! Yesterday was awesome. I got to chat with the girl giving out morning coffee for a bit. It’s amazing how many conversations a Perry the Platypus T-shirt starts. We packed up camp and went to Jackson to get some info about what there was to do in the area. Jackson Hole, if you don’t know, is a snowboarder’s paradise. Looking at the map of the mountain, you could spend days skiing and never go down the same trail twice. I’m definitely coming back in the winter with my brother. In the summer, there are other ways to get your fill of adrenaline. Looking for the visitor’s center, we stumbled across a business that takes customers paragliding. Yup, you know where this is going!! My grandfather (Papa) was the one who instigated the entire trip, wanting to travel the country with his family while he could. That’s a typical grandfatherly thing to do, I think. What isn’t is wanting to go paragliding with your grandson. He had already signed on the twenty or so dotted lines on the numerous liability wavers before I even realized we were actually going to do it. So we rode the tram to a peak ten-thousand feet above sea level, strapped on some harnesses, and spent about fifteen minutes gliding through the air before we kinda sorta crash-landed in the field. It was really cool that I got pictures of him in mid-air (he took off a bit before me, so he was flying ahead of me) and also a few seconds of mid-air video. Seeing us on the ground and completely intact gave mom, dad, and even my grandmother the courage to do it as well. By the way, Papa is 80.

Since everyone else went paragliding and we’ve all been doing adult stuff the whole trip, it was Kaylee’s turn to have some fun. I went with her on a slide that you had to ride a ski lift to get to. Then we took her to a local rec center for a few hours, where the two of us swam in the pool and went down the water slide (“It’s one-hundred and eighty-five feet long, Michael!!!” I heard more than once) a few dozen times. We wrapped up the day with dinner at a Chinese restaurant (it was my turn to pick where we ate) and stayed at a campground right inside the city. All in all, a great day!