Tuesday, August 13 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - Grand Tetons National Park

Tuesday, August 13 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - Grand Tetons National Park

Warning - this is a long post but most of it is pictures with just a few comments here and there.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019
We were both looking forward to visiting the Grand Tetons.  We left Lander, WY at 9:56am and headed north.  Another beautiful drive in Wyoming, which is now one of my favorite states we have visited, but every state has it's own beauty and uniqueness.  

As we were leaving Lander, WY.

Just a short distance down the road was Fort Washakie.  I think it's really neat to see rocks laid out at the entrance to a town.  That takes a lot of work!

 The drive was amazing  and we enjoyed the changes in the landscape throughout the mornings' drive.

It had been awhile since we had seen so much lush green in a field.

It was time for a break and we pulled into this nice rest area.  I always like to read the signs on display.

A nice shot of Bentley with a few mountains in the background.

 We continued on down the road, admiring more of this gorgeous state.

Uh-oh, road construction ahead!

We were first in line for this stop and that turned out to be a good thing.  The young man working  here (with the stop sign in the above picture) visited with us the entire time we waited.  It sure helped pass the time until the pilot car returned to lead us through the construction zone.  He told us they were expecting an ambulance to come through.  A man on a bicycle had an accident, but it had not shown up when it was time for us to move on through the construction area.

This is where the bicycle accident occurred.  The rider was not hit, he took a spill.  We did see him sitting on the back of a truck, but he was holding a cloth to his face.

It's starting to green up as we move closer to the Tetons.

Our first site of the Grand Tetons!  They really are GRAND!

We pulled into Buffalo Valley Crossing RV Park at was set up by 1:23pm.

Our home for the next three days.

We had a quick lunch and left to tour the area.  

Amazing - Enormous - Mysterious

We stopped at a roadside area to view the Tetons and the Snake River below.

Loved these flowers and enjoyed the butterflies that were flitting around.

 A man and woman were near us.  He stooped down to rub his hand on the ends of this bush and then let his wife smell it.  I asked him about the smell - he reached down and rubbed another plant and let me smell it.  I really liked the smell of it.  

Sagebrush

 The Jackson Airport - which I enjoyed watching everytime we were near it, due to the number of plans landing and taking off there.  I love watching them.  

Side story - when my stepbrother Mike moved to Tulsa in the mid-70's, we would go to the airport to the far end to sit and watch the planes take off and land.  (Long before you were restricted from going to the gates with family or friends.)  We would also sit along the road at a parking area in Joplin to watch the planes there as well.  Times have changed, but I still enjoy watching them.

Take off - I wonder where they are going?

 We were debating how we wanted to reach West Yellowstone where our next campground is located.  Should we go north on Hwy 191 through Yellowstone National Park or go through Jackson Hole and take the Teton Pass into Idaho and come in from the west.  We decided we would drive the Teton Pass to see what it was like - knowing we were bound to see some more beautiful country.

Antler Entrance to a nice park in downtown Jackson Hole, WY.

 Jackson Hole is one of the busiest tourist areas we've been in.  Maybe it wasn't as bad as some places but it was small so the amount of tourists seemed overwhelming as they walked the streets.  The sidewalks were so full of people we had no desire to even try to find a parking spot, let alone get out and mingle in the crowd.  

I thought this raft full of a family of bears was pretty cute!

And here we go!

It's a long way up that mountain!

Steep and curvy!

Soon we passed into Idaho

Snow skis make up the blue fence you see here.

and now we are back in Wyoming

We stopped here to look at the views

This is what we saw!

What a beautiful view on such a beautiful day!

See the roads below!!!

This is how the road looked on our GPS as we made our way back to Jackson Hole.

After the drive, we realized we could take Teton Pass, but ultimately we decided to take 191 North through Yellowstone National Park after talking to several people who told us this would not be an issue.

Beautiful vistas as we passed by.

 We returned to the park.  I wanted to walk over to the center portion of the RV Park.  We were on the south side, there is a large area in the middle where the office, restaurant and service station was located, and another area on the north side.  The park has entertainment each evening in the middle section around a large fire pit.  A man by the name of Cracker Jack is to tell stories and sing around a campfire.  It was a bit corny and I didn't take a jacket with me so we didn't stay too long.  I wanted to get up and move to get better pictures of the sunset at this point, so we headed back to Bentley.

Look at those colors!

and it got even better!

Taken out Bentley's back window.  Notice our neighbor's wife - in front of us and to the left - was standing on their rig to take pictures!

What a glorious day we had!

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

We were excited to get out and explore more of the area today.  As we left the campground, we turned northwest (approximately) towards Jackson.  There is a really nice pullout here where you can view the Grand Tetons.  The one thing we soon noticed - it didn't matter where you were at - there was a view of these beautiful mountains - they seemed to follow us.  It was really interesting.  I am amazed of all there is on this earth - made by God for us to enjoy - I can only imagine what he has in store for his children in heaven.  

Teton Glacier Information

The large white area is the glacier.

I noticed this water fall high up on the mountain.

Mount Moran

Maxx our truck - in front of the Tetons.

Southern part of Jackson Lake.

Dam spillway at Jackson Lake near Signal Mountain Lodge - the mountains are staying with us, but the roads are moving northwest.

A little information on Snake River which runs along the bottom of the Grand Tetons.  

 After reading the sign, I wondered about these families leaving together with three of the children in their own little "canoes".   I bet it was quite a ride.

From here, we drove toward the Lodge at Jackson Lake....the Tetons are still following us.

We've arrived at the Jackson Lodge.

We walked through the lodge to the viewing area, and then walked outside where we stood at a railing looking out over this marshy area.   While here, I heard the man next to me tell his wife - there's a moose!  I quickly told Dean to take a picture with my camera and I was taking them with my phone.  Dean's video of him barely got him but I've not had any luck in downloading a video to the blog, so this is the next best thing.

I managed to get a picture as it was walking away from us

 We enjoyed just looking at this beautiful view for awhile before moving on.

As we returned to the campground I took some pictures of the horses fenced in the area across the street from us.  It made me think of our granddaughter Dacy and how much she would love this.

We went back to Bentley to have dinner, and then we took out for another "evening" ride hoping to see some wildlife.

Our first stop was at "Morman Row" - an area settled by a large group of Morman's at the turn of the 19th century.  Here is a little information - you can enlarge this to view the info.

These little creatures are Pika's.  They were all over at this location.

 Dean loved looking at the barns, however he was very disappointed we could not walk inside so he could look closer at the construction methods used.

He's peeking into the barn but it was difficult to see much at this hour of the day.

 We walked back another 300-500 feet to view an additional barn.

The homestead and barn from the back of the property.

The home through a small group of aspen trees.

There are some nice loops near here that the ranger told us might prove to be locations for wildlife, so we headed out.  When I saw this dark brown spot I asked Dean to stop.  We were the only ones on the road at the time, so I zoomed in to see if I could tell what it was.  

It was moving a little and I wondered if it might be a buffalo.

 Before it stood up, it was rolling around on the ground - notice the dust!

There he is!

We were really hoping to see a moose along the Gros Ventre River.  The ranger had told us it was a good location, but we only found these pronghorn deer - and we saw lots of them, with quite a few buffalo in the field behind them.

As we moved on down the road, we noticed people pulled off the road with binoculars and cameras, so we stopped to see what they were looking at.  Yes, we were curious - was it something special?

Unfortunately, we missed the moose that was walking with her calf, but we did see her head.  She had laid down behind this small brushy area in the middle.  If you look to the right of the area you can see her ears.  (Enlarge these pictures to see it closer)

This picture I zoomed in more on the area where she was laying and you can see her ears.

Well, our moose adventure didn't turn out to be as exciting as we hoped in our picture taking but we did see the one at Jackson Lodge so it was a good day for us!

On our return to the campground we got to see a little bit of a sunset before the clouds took over.

These clouds behind the Tetons were pretty neat looking with the sun hitting them late in the evening.

We saw a few elk but I it was too dark to get a good focus on them.

While we didn't have a beautiful colored sunset, the dark clouds against the Tetons was also beautiful it its own way.

Then this beautiful full moon showed up!

and I got this shot over the south end of Jackson Lake before we headed back to the campground.

Thursday, August 15, 2019 - Our Last Day in the Grand Tetons

Our time here has flown by.  It is such a beautiful area and we will be sad to leave it.  Another look at the Tetons!

I finally remembered to take a picture of the entrance sign - we always flew by before so I told Dean we had to make sure we got it this morning.

 We drove back up to Jackson Lake, but went clear to the north end today.

 While it was a gorgeous day when we left it did cloud up a bit and the wind blew pretty hard for awhile, before settling down.  There were a few brave souls wading in the ice cold waters.  Not for me!!

I think bicycling is great but there were alot of folks out this morning, with small children and road construction going on.  It as slow moving.  I hope they've done alot of pre-riding.  I couldn't make it up those hills on my bike.

 Bear Aware information was all around us.  We never saw a bear, but we did hear about them.

Our next stop was a Jenny Lake where we took a short hike on Leigh Lake Trailhead along String Lake.  There were so many families and young couples here having a great time on the water.

Just a pretty sight!

We went back to Bentley for lunch and rested a bit before we got out again later, hoping to find some more wildlife on our last night here.

The clouds started rolling in

As we made a loop around an area where wildlife is usually found we decided to take this unnamed road through a beautiful row of aspen trees.

We turned around a short while later when the road got to rough to go any further.  Those Tetons are always there!

We just knew we would run into rain but the most we had were a few drops.

We caught this beautiful sunset as we returned to the park!

The glow to the east from the sunset.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time here in the Grand Tetons.  If you haven't visited, it would be well worth your time to make the trip!