Grand Teton National Park

Last year we heard many stories from others about the beauty of the Grand Tetons, but we just couldn't fit it in our trip. This year we were determined to see it.

After participating in the Afton parade (by accident - see prior post)we headed towards Jackson Hole. This was a shorter drive that I thot it would be. Again we traveled thru beautiful farm land and ranches.

Jackson Hole is a ski resort community with a cowboy twist. The architecture has a unique flare all its own. And guess what? ...they were having a parade too! But try as he might Gary could not find a way to get our bbow in this one.

As the parade ended we found a spot to park the bbow - right next to all the police horse trailers. Perfect. This gave us a chance to walk thru town a bit.

The square in the center of town has an arch on each corner made completely of elk antlers. The Boy Scouts had collected these antlers back in the 1960's. That's a lot of antlers!

We found a few fun things to buy and then grabbed lunch at Saddle Rock Family Saloon. This was actually a dinner theater and our lunch servers were some of the actors from the show. Every so often music would start and they would sing to us. My favorite song was "You Are My Sunshine" because my Daddy used to sing that with us and taught it to all my kids when they were little.

By the time we left town clouds has rolled in and it was quite windy. We drove to the park entrance closest to the ski village and as we entered there was a big sign saying bbows were not allowed. Say what??

Apparently this entrance has a section of road too narrow and windy for them to navigate. (Gary still thinks he and the bbow could have handled it) We had to drive back thru Jackson Hole to enter at the Moose Junction entrance. This brought us in the park close to the new Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center - a impressive building to say the least.

We spent about an hour there and then entered the actual park at the Moose entry station. The nice part was we now knew what we wanted to see, where to go to see it, and that there were still RV sites available inside the park for tonite. One of the ranger presentations explained where all the animals could be seen, so armed with that information we had a great game plan.

The Grand Teton Range, while not all that long, is absolutely incredible to see. What makes it so magnificent is that there are no foothills to obstruct them, so they appear to rise straight up out of the Jackson Hole valley. The jagged peaks are still covered with snow and do have an Alps-like appearance.

It was important that we secure a place to camp tonite so we drove half way thru the park to get a site. On the way we spotted an elk and a bit later a prong horn.

Suddenly we saw vehicles pulled over everywhere and knew something big was happening, so we got as close as we could and Taryn jumped out to climb up on top of the bbow and see what everyone was looking at. It was actually two black bears playing in the scrub brush. We maneuvered to a better spot and could see them as they moved in and out of view. Then one began to head straight for the road. The ranger stopped vehicles in both directions and the bear actually came right out on to the road. He seemed to realize he was a photo op so he stopped, posed, turned, and went right back where he came from. The three of us watched this from the top of the bbow but the people on the ground ran up to get as close of a picture as the ranger would allow - which was actually quite close.

The best was a woman who missed the picture moment. A most kind Japanese man showed her his picture on his wide screen camera. She then took a picture of the bear off his picture of the bear...and it turned out! She was so happy.

We got a campsite, made a quick dinner, and then went out to look for animals again. Evening is the perfect time. And we were not disappointed. We saw herds of elk grazing in a valley, drove right thru a moving herd of buffalo and nourished some of the biggest mosquitoes we have seen this trip.