Guess Where I Went -- Part IX

Dubby doesn't like guessing games, so I'll go ahead and tell you. Idaho Falls, Idaho. East of Idaho Falls.

Teton Pass, Idaho. That's Jackson Hole in the background below.

There was LOTS of snow up at Teton Pass. The snow under my feet here is about 10 feet deep.

I didn't have much time to hike today, so most of my pictures are taken from roadside overlooks. However, I did take the time to hike about a quarter mile up a trail at the top of Teton Pass. It was only about 15 minutes, but it was a nice walk. Temperature here was about 60 in the sunshine.

A 10% grade, and they weren't fooling. This is twice as steep at the 5% grade coming off Swift Run gap east of Elkton Virginia.

Jackson, Wyoming. Look closely at the arch behind me below. It's made entirely of elk antlers. There were a dozen or more of these in the town of Jackson.

Below: la trois tetons. I can't identify which three peaks are the three being spoken of, but the whole range is pretty. Not as pretty as trois real tetons, of course, but pretty nonetheless.

Jenny Lake, in the Grand Teton National Park.

Another shot of Jenny Lake.

Hmmm. I wonder if this Jenny is the one with the "grand tetons"?

Below: Jackson Lake, a few miles north of Jenny Lake, looking south. Nice reflection.

From the Tetons I drove north to Yellowstone National Park. The road is torn up (really, truly, torn up... right down to the dirt) because they are rebuilding it, so it's one lane all the way from the Tetons to Yellowstone. What would normally be about a 1-hour drive at 65 mph is a five-hour ordeal of driving 15 minutes through thick dust at 25 mph, then waiting for 15 minutes stopped dead while oncoming traffic goes by, then driving another 15 minutes through the dust, etc. ---- But finally... Yellowstone Park.

The park is huge. It takes several hours just to drive from one end to the other. And several more hours if you stop to see things, the way I did. Yep, that's Old Faithful in the background below.

Solid ice on the lake below. It's late May and several lakes are still frozen over completely. It's melting slowly, but the entire lake is still covered with ice.

Where the buffalo roam.

Lots of geysers, steam springs, fumaroles, bubble pots, etc.

Buffalo, and more buffalo. They are like shaggy cows. They wander the roadway, block traffic, make piles of poop, and like cows, ten of them put together have the cumulative intelligence of a rock.

One of the many waterfalls along the road in the park.

Over 800,000 acres (almost half the park) burned in 1988. The good news is, the young trees are growing nicely. They won't be a real "forest" for another hundred years or so (things grow slowly up here), but for now, they are nice and healthy.

Below is the famous canyon that gave Yellowstone its name.

That's the "lower" falls in the background below.

Below is a classic view looking up Yellowstone Canyon. You see this view a lot in picture books and promotional photos of the park.

This is looking across the canyon...

And this is looking down the canyon to the north...

Below is another "classic" view. It was late in the day, about 6 pm. The falls were in the shade, so the photo isn't quite as professional as I would have liked. But click on it to see the big version.

And here is my favorite shot. Again, the falls in the shade, but still a pretty picture. Click below to see a bigger version.

You can see why it's named Yellowstone.

It took me two solid hours of driving to get from the canyon to the northern park boundary at Mammoth Hot Springs. I arrived there about dark. Then it took another hour of driving to get to Interstate 90 in Montana, and two more to go east to Billings. It's almost midnight. Long Day. But worth it.