I’m behind posting about the last few days of our trip while in Grand Teton National Park. Seems like we’ve been seeing a lot and I just didn’t get it done. Debbie told me that I’ve been too long-winded in my posts, so you can decide whether to take the time to read it or not. I just can’t seem to get everything we did into a few short sentences. We’ll see how successful I am in keeping this brief, but still share what we did and saw.
Thursday, June 23 (Day 17)
For the first time since we arrived in West Yellowstone, we woke up to find that it hadn’t snowed and the sun was coming up on a partly cloudy morning. This made sense because this was our day to leave and travel south to Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park.
After consulting the Grand Design Owners Facebook page, it seemed that the unanimous opinion of those that had taken both paths from West Yellowstone to Grand Teton N.P. was to go through Yellowstone N.P. That turned out to be such an easy trip that I’d recommend that route to anyone needing to make the trip between Grand Teton and Yellowstone, even pulling a trailer.
The road out of the south end of Yellowstone becomes the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway which had a lot of beautiful overlooks. In places, the snow along the side of the road was still 4-6 feet deep. But, leaving Yellowstone we ran into our old friend from the previous few days, snow, but it wasn’t heavy enough to cause us any issues.
We checked into the Colter Bay Village RV Park and found it to be a little crowded due to the upcoming holiday weekend. Although the spots were heavily wooded and not very level, we had no problems getting everything situated and hooked up. We discovered, however, that we had neither cell nor WiFi coverage (another reason for not posting lately). A short trip to the National Park Service Visitor Center in the Village provided us great maps of the trails and sights, along with a great view of the Teton Mountains.
With some daylight remaining, we took a quick drive south to the Jackson Lake Lodge. It’s a beautiful hotel with a grand lobby that faces the lake and mountains. They have a huge panoramic window on the back that I believe is 60 feet high and stretches all the way across the large lobby. We followed that with a scenic drive down Teton Park Road to Signal Mountain Road, which took us to the top of a smaller mountain that offered amazing views of both the Tetons and of the large valley that makes up much of Grand Teton National Park. We also drove south past Jenny Lake and down to Moose before turning back north along US-191, which is the main road though the park, until we came to the turnoff that leads over to Mormon Row and the often photographed Moulton Barn. Pictures there didn’t provide me the outcome that I wanted due to the fading light, so a return trip was in order. As we headed towards our campground, it seemed that everywhere we looked there were large herds of elk and an occasional Pronghorn antelope.
We finished off the night eating dinner at the restaurant at Colter Bay Village and discovered that they actually had Wi-Fi. It was the first night that they were open for the season. Our waiter had just come to Grand Teton to work and we had quite the chuckle as he described how terrified he was while driving through the mountains from his home in the flatlands of Kansas. All in all, a good starting day to our few days here.
Friday, June 24 (Day 18)
Our first full day at Grand Teton N.P. started out with cold, rain, and clouds, so we were slow to venture out. Once we did, we found that you couldn’t even see more than just the first few hundred feet of the mountains. We decided to plow ahead and visit some of the various visitor centers and other sights that didn’t necessarily involve looking at the Teton peaks, in spite of 37 degree temperatures and light rain.
The only part that we could see, had received a light coating of fresh snow. We veered off the main road to take the Jenny Lake scenic drive. It was very pretty and we decided that we’d need to come back when we could see the mountains along with the lake. The drive runs both directions along the lake from the north end of the drive to the Jenny Lake Lodge. After that the road to the south is one way, southbound, down to the Jenny Lake Visitor Center, which we found to still be closed for the season.
We made our way to the village of Moose and the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center. I’ve got to say that this is one of the nicest visitor centers that we’ve ever encountered, with a huge expanse of tall windows that directly face the Tetons. From there, we drove the Moose-Wilson road. This is a scenic drive that includes about 2 miles of unpaved road. We were told that we’d see moose there and weren’t disappointed; finding one moose hiding in the trees about 30 yards off the road. We took the turnoff to Teton Village in Jackson Hole where we had hoped to ride the gondola to the top of the ski mountain there, but since we couldn’t even see the top, we didn’t go.
From there, we went into the town of Jackson, which I don’t see as much more than a tourist trap. We stopped at the visitor center, where Debbie took some pictures of a Canadian goose and her freshly hatched offspring. It seemed that our luck had changed as the sun began to come out and the clouds that had been hiding the mountains all day began to clear. We thought this might give us some opportunities to take the Gros Ventre Road and circle back around to Mormon Row in hopes of getting some better pictures, which we did. We saw several more moose along the way, but unfortunately none of them yet had antlers (Debbie’s goal). We were able to get several good pictures of the Moulton Barn and mountains.
We circled back to the Chapel of the Transfiguration, a small, old Episcopal church had a large window behind the alter that perfectly framed the Teton mountains. It was a very pretty chapel, but my pictures didn’t come out very well since I had left my flash back at camp. We followed that with an unpaved turnoff to Schwabacher Landing where the river there had a beaver dam and small lake, before moving on to the Snake River Overlook. This was the location of a famous Ansel Adams photograph that was sent into space on one of the Voyager spacecraft.
Saturday, May 25 (Day 19)
Once again we started out with cold, wet, and cloudy weather, but decided we wanted to try to get some hiking in as it was still clearer than the day before. We went back to Jenny Lake and took a ferry across the 41 degree water to a trail to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. Even though it wasn’t perfect, it was a great hike where we almost immediately saw a moose laying just off the trail. There were many places where we the trail was covered in snow. Due to the crowd, we first bypassed the falls to go to Lower Inspiration Point where we found several marmots scampering among the rocks. Even though they didn’t seem to like our presence, I was able to get some good pictures. Heading back down the mountain, we did take the 60 yard, snow covered side trail to Hidden Falls. The view of the 200 foot waterfall certainly didn’t disappoint. With the return of more clouds and rain, we decided to loop back down to Jackson to pick up some propane since the campground was having issues with their equipment. As we left the south entrance of the park, we stopped along the road to watch a moose very near the truck. She seemed to be trying to figure out how to cross the road with all of the cars and ended up passing just in front of ours for some great pictures and video. A great ending to our last full day in Grand Teton National Park.
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LyndDebTravel 