Sep

Travel Journal — Snake River and Grand Teton National Park

September 18, 2007 — On the way over to Jackson, Wyoming, we took Teton Pass. The steep grade was interesting for towing our camper over — especially on the downhill side!

We’re camped right next to the Snake River. We walked down to the water’s edge shortly after we got here and saw a couple of boats of fishermen floating downstream.

September 19, 2007:

The new visitor center at the Moose entrance to Grand Teton National Park has only been open a few weeks. It is quite impressive, and, given the volume of visitors through here, sorely needed.

The “courtyard” going into the visitor center.

The visitor center includes a very modern museum/interpretive center. In this photo, Karen is standing on top of a set of video panels showing the role of fire in the park’s natural cycle. There were several of these floor video panels, each showing the same video, I think, but sequenced so it seems like they are all different. Instinctively, it just feels wrong to walk on the displays, but that is what they are designed for or there would be a barrier to keep people off.

There were quite a few bronze statues depicting different parts of the history of what is now the park.

The Tetons, looking across Jenny Lake. We walked a trail later in the day that goes up the notch on the left into Cascade Canyon.

On the trail, headed first to Hidden Falls.

There are some huge trees in the park.

Hidden Falls

A British couple that had road the same boat across Jenny Lake took this photo for me after I had offered to take one of them with their camera. We ran into them again later in town.

Fall colors on the way up. On this trail, it is a constant climb up to and a little past Inspiration Point, which is about a mile in. Then it levels out in Cascade Canyon. We hiked a ways into the canyon, but turned back because we were at our limit for distance and we also had to get back to ensure a ride back across the lake. We ended up doing about 5 miles all told, which is an improvement for us.

This is the toughest part of the trail — not for the faint of heat or those who fear heights. There is a long drop-off at this point. Sensible shoes highly recommended! — although we saw people with smooth soled shoes and even sandals! These folks were very tentative coming down, especially the last guy. He kept very close to the inside wall and even then almost fell when he got down to safety at the point where we were standing.

We had been there before and went up — and down — with no problem.

One of the few pictures of me — I take most of the pictures.

After we got to Inspiration Point, we continued a ways, but were planning to turn back before too long as we had already done a lot better than we had thought we would. Along the way, several people returning told us about 3 moose off the trail a ways ahead so we kept plodding along. We finally found them. They were a ways off the trail laying down. We couldn’t see them very well, but I was able to enhance this photo to bring out the rack on this bull moose.