Grand Tetons, Wyoming (Wednesday, August 7th, 2019)

After taking a few days in Denver to regroup from our Ireland trip, we headed north.  We spent a night in Little America, Wyoming, which was incredibly pleasant!  Now we are in Idaho Falls, Idaho, making side trips during the days if we feel like it, and exploring town on the days we feel like just hanging out.

Today we made the drive from Idaho Falls, over Teton Pass and into Wyoming, where we drove north to Grand Teton National Park.  

It is fairly small as national parks go, but it is incredibly beautiful from every angle.  It was the perfect park for a day trip, allowing us to see all that we wanted, and still make it back over the pass well before dark.

The drive east through Idaho on highway 26 took us through miles and miles of rolling hills of grain, a few cattle ranches and of course, a beautiful mountain drive over Teton Pass.

Our first glimpse of the Grand Tetons was from the west as we approached the town of Victor.  But we still had a long way to go to get to the national park from here.

On our way in, we drove through the town of Jackson, Wyoming.  A bustling tourist town, with lots of shops and restaurants.  We stopped only long enough to chat with a ranger in the visitor's center for a few minutes, then jumped back in the car and headed north again.

Once we reached the park, we decided to go ahead and buy an annual national parks pass, hoping that we will make it to other national parks before the year is up.  It seems reasonable that we will.  We did the 42 mile loop drive, stopping often to take pictures and enjoy the scenery.

We found a beautiful, yet eerie drive behind Jackson Lake, where we decided to stop for lunch.  It was an old burn area with standing dead trees everywhere.  

It was fun to see all of the beautiful wildflowers thriving in this otherwise burned out part of the forest.

We hiked to our lunch spot, with Jackson Lake behind us, and Mount Moran directly in front of us.  It was so peaceful!

After lunch, we did the Jenny Lake loop to get more spectacular views in.

We saw this beautiful western tanager at one of our stops.

When we finished in the park, we took Wilson Road back out to the Teton Pass Highway.  This allowed us to miss all of the traffic of Jackson, and we were hoping to maybe see a moose down in the willows.  

No moose for us today, but we did get to see a beautiful doe, only about 5 feet from us.  What a treat!

On the Idaho side of Teton Pass, we saw multiple osprey nests.  This one had three babies in it, and one of the parents was sitting on the telephone pole not far away.  The baby on the right was really working it's wings, getting ready to make it's first flight.

Grand Tetons National Park was beautiful, as was the drive to get there.  We could have stayed for days and done some hiking, but we felt like we saw a lot in the short amount of time that we had.  As always, the wildlife that we saw was the highlight for me, and the perfect ending to our perfect day!