Grand Teton!

Latest update from the road.  Not much internet service available here, which is probably a good thing.

Coming up from Kemmerer to Jackson was a great drive.  We saw lots of Pronghorn Antelope in the fields along the way. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we have antelope here in the U.S. and not just in Africa.  From what we read, even though they can run really fast they aren't good jumpers, so the fences kept them off the road for the most part.

As you may have seen from Kelly's blog, we spent 2 very enjoyable days in Grand Teton National Park.  Although the weather started out not the greatest we found out that we were lucky, since most people hadn't even seen the mountains the previous 3 days with all the rain.  We did a few of the scenic drives, but the rain returned and hid the mountains from view.  We took a wet hike before dinner and photographed some nice wildflowers, but no grand mountain shots with the lake as we had hoped for.  After a quick dinner it was back to the cabin where we watched another rain and hailstorm (thankfully small) come through.

What are you doing out in this weather?

The next morning looked like more of the same, but we pressed on, hoping for some clearing.  Our plan was to do the Jenny Lake to North Fork in Cascade Canyon hike.  After a cold ride across the lake in the shuttle boat, we hiked to Hidden Falls.  There were no mountains in sight due to all the mist and cloud cover.  We took our time and photographed yet more wildflowers as we hoped for conditions to improve.  Heading up the trail toward Inspiration Point we came across some chipmunks that were quite amusing.  The first was happily munching away on flowers and didn't seem at all concerned with us watching.  The second looked like he had already eaten waaay too much.  I've never seen such a round chipmunk before.  Obviously it's been a good year for food for them!

"Normal" looking chippie enjoying a flower

Looks like a few too many flowers!

Farther up the trail we saw and heard Pikas.  There were quite a few around the rocks.. I've seen a few from a distance before but this was the first time I've had a close look at them.

Pika up close

Next stop up was Inspiration Point, which didn't look so inspiring at first.  We did get some glimmer of clearing though, which was encouraging.

Inspiring?

Finally further up the canyon the skies cleared and we could see the magnificent montain range.  We had a great hike up the canyon to North Fork.  Given the forecast we opted to turn around there rather than continue further.

Now that's more like it!

Kelly on the trail

That turned out to be a great decision as we came upon a mother and baby moose grazing across the river on the way back.  Even better though was when a bull which we hadn't seen below us charged up the creek!  It was amazing how fast he moved.

That wasn't the last of the excitement though as someone up the trail yelled and down came a large fox from the hill.  It passed right in front of Kelly, detouring around her and then proceeded down the trail.  At first I thought it was a coyote, but it was mainly black and had yellow eyes.  We showed the picture to the Park Naturalist later and she confrmed that it was a red fox.  She hadn't seen this one before but said it must be one of the pups of a black female that they were familiar with. All in all a great day of hiking and seeing wild creatures!

Sort of spooky looking and way too close

After a nice dinner at the Signal Mountain Lodge we returned to the cabin where it promptly began raining and hailing again.  Not a bit surprising given our record so far :-) 

The morning dawned mostly sunny and I managed to get a few shots of Mt. Moran shortly after sunrise.  We had a nice conversation with our neighbor who had been admiring Jane.  He was from one of the areas that Kelly had planned on visiting later in the trip. By now the clouds and haze had rolled in, so we scuttled our plans to view more of Grand Teton and headed north.

Finally a view of Mt. Moran!

We had a great treat in getting to see a Grizzly Bear by the road on our way out.  The rangers were already there directing traffic, but we were able to get a good look at him and be much closer than normally allowed.  First time for either of us to see a Grizzly!

Close to a Grizzly (protected by Jane)

More to come...