Getting Our First Taste of the Tetons

There's a lot to see and do in Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole. Our inn host, Sherrie, recommended a couple of loop drives to give us a good sense of where we are. She suggested we take every turnout and stop at every lookout. We made a good run at doing just that. Without taking Sherrie's guidance completely literally, we hopped in and out of the car untold times and covered a fair amount of the park. Here, too, the air quality was not great. Fires in neighboring states have left a lot of haze, and Jackson has some periodic issues with inversions that can trap the smoke.

We hit a lot of the usual sites, such as Jenny Lake and Jackson Lake. The scenery in this valley is truly awesome, haze or no. We were surprised at the crowds of people and lines of tour buses. But it's so spectacularly beautiful that we just tried to focus on what was in front of us and not worry about how many others were standing alongside us. This is where hikers have an advantage, but there were a lot of people on the trails as well. Not surprising given how beautiful the weather was today.

We also managed to see all the major wildlife groups. We started off our wildlife quest with a surprise sighting of a young black bear, loping past us as we drove just a few miles from our inn. A few miles further along, we saw a herd of elk running out of nowhere, across the road a ways ahead of us. All I got was a picture of the back side of a couple of them, but it was pretty exciting to see.

Other sightings today: pronghorn antelope, bison, and moose. Pretty cool! Seeing both a bear and some moose on our first day here won us some ooh's and ah's from our fellow inn guests as we basked in the late afternoon sun (and 74 degrees!), swapping tales of the wildlife sighted and the ones that eluded us.

























Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.


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