Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

Thursday, June 21: Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park

This was one high-powered, almost non-stop, fun-filled, educational, party of a day. That’s why we were all smiling so much in this photo! Don’t expect a blow-by-blow account this time; I”ll just give a short summary, hit a few highlights, and let you enjoy the photos below.

We had booked a split-day wildlife tour with Jackson Hole Grand Expeditions, so it was a long one, extending from our pickup at the Rustic Inn at 5:00 AM until well after 9:00 PM, after the sun had set. We did have a break around 1:00 for a refuel and nap before we went back out at 4:00, but that seemed to pass far too soon. By the way, we all agreed that this was a fabulous day, especially because Dan Muscatell was a great guide, not only showing us all sorts of places and wildlife, but also giving us a lot of help with our cameras. We can’t say enough good things about Dan!

SO — the first thing we did was go to a somewhat secluded spot off to the west of highway 171, north of the Jackson Hole Airport, along a creek that was a tributary of a river that was a tributary of the Snake River. Or maybe it was an even smaller tributary. Dan said we were going to Schwaby’s and the sign said Schwabacher’s Landing, so now you know as much as I do. Dan parked the van, we got out followed him along a dirt path, and looked to the west at the Grand Tetons.

Wait! Off to the WEST??! The sun rises is the East, right? We were there to see the sunrise, weren’t we? Yep. We were. And see it we did. It was a swap from last night’s sunset photos: We looked west to see the effect of the sun rising behind us on those crazy mountains. Dan had led us to a place along a quiet creek with absolutely calm water, with the dim reflection of the Grand Tetons off to the West reflecting in the water.

Mountains. Big mountains. Big mountains with snow on them even through we were right there at the beginning of summer. June 21, people! Snow? Well. We weren’t in Kansas, after all. Or in Alabama.

And it was well and truly awesome. Not the “awesome” of contemporary language, but truly a sight that induced a feeling of deep-seated awe in me. No joke. It was totally overpowering. Between us we took hundreds of pictures between the time the first signs of reddish light showed up on the mountain tops until the sun was shining on the trees at their base. Then we moved to a different spot with a different reflection before we moved to yet a third place. It was thrilling! Every minute. We saw many other people at the other places, but that first spot was ours alone that day.

After an hour or so, it was time to move on to a new place and a new experience. In fact we took off over and over again all morning for all sorts of places and experiences. We stopped along Mormon Row to see a couple of surviving nineteenth-century barns, not quite as old as the big barn at Cook Hill, but better preserved. We stopped at an overlook to look at the Snake River and the Tetons from the same spot Ansel Adams had photographed them.

We saw a lot of Pronghorn deer, singly and in groups. I know that’s really about as exciting as seeing white-tails here, but the land was so flat we could see them in the distance in just about any direction. And they were not white-tailed deer, so to us they were a little exotic, you know? We saw bison everywhere, along the roads, in fields, along the tree line, sometimes in the same field with Angus cattle, sometimes in places by themselves. But we never got too close to them. A good thing, all in all. Shortly before our lunch break, Mark spotted a moose in a creek, just muddling along below the highway. That’s something we don’t see down home. We saw elk, ground squirrels, birds, and bears.

Yep. Bears. Another highlight of the day. When we saw some cars pulled off the road and people staring up a hill with binoculars, we stopped and joined them. Up the hill was a black bear sow with three cubs. Apparently she wanted to cross the road, and I guess every tourist there wanted to watch her do it. Members of the Grand Teton Wildlife Brigade were there, keeping people at a safe distance and also keeping the road clear for local traffic, and that was a good thing. We stayed there and watched from a safe distance until all four of them made it across the road safely. Christy made the photo; I didn’t manage to get that good a shot. Dan tried to take us to the other side of the hill she headed up, but the road we needed was closed. It seems “the bear went over the mountain” without us, so we didn’t get to see what she saw.

During the second trip out into Jackson Hole we saw more of everything, even revisiting some of the same places. Our first stop was at the site of the “Shane” cabins, built for the movie of the same name. We probably wouldn’t have gone there, but a friend posted a clip from the movie when he recognized the mountains in the photos we posted while we could have been napping. It was actually a fun connection to have with someone hundreds of miles away. We saw lots of beautiful lakes, groves of aspen and pines, and even a bull elk just sitting there watching us.

The day ended the way it started: photographing the sun, This time we were actually looking in the right direction, staring off into the west as the sun went down behind the Grand Tetons. That provided the best of all possible endings to the day.