Travel with Sue and Ted

Tag: Grand Teton

  • First Snow! And a day at Yellowstone

    It rained on us during our last night in Grand Teton National Park, but we woke up to snow on the mountains, at a level of only 500 feet above the valley floor.  Here’s our view of the Grand Teton Valley as we left the park that morning.  This a is the Snake River, and Sue took this picture at the very spot where Ansel Adams took his famous picture of the Grand Tetons.    

    Grand Tetons – After First Snow

    Our travel to Yellowstone was made very long as the southern entrance was closed due to fire.  So instead of a two hour drive, it took six hours to go south, then west, then north then east and enter Yellowstone from the West Yellowstone side.  The fortunate thing about that was we got to have lunch with my sister Gayle as she was staying in West Yellowstone.  

    Bison after first snow in Yellowstone

    Yellowstone park is a higher elevation than Grand Teton, and it snowed everywhere.  We therefore caught the sight of Yellowstone’s first snow of the season! We stayed two nights at Fishing Bridge, saw bison, elk, moose, deer, swan, eagle and a squirrel and a crow.  The bubbling hot springs were steaming in the cold 45 degree air, and the Yellowstone River was gorgeous.  

    We’d love for you to see more of Sue’s pictures of Yellowstone, so click on this special blog page:  

    Yellowstone Page

    You’ll see six more photos including bison, waterfalls and us on that linked page entitled Yellowstone.  

    T & S

  • Hiking Around String Lake

    On Sunday we hiked around String Lake in Grand Teton National Park. It is next to Jenny Lake, and is a six mile hike through pine, aspen, chaparral, and streams.

    We thoroughly enjoyed the hike and even ventured off to nearby Leigh Lake. There were a lot of kayakers and groups with canoes traversing these two lakes.

    The weather is beginning to get a bit colder these nights, but so far the days have been gorgeous for hiking, biking, and walking to the laundromat to spend a few minutes on wifi.

    We also took a drive to the center of Grand Teton NP to see the famous Mormon Barn that is in so many gorgeous photos of the Teton Mountains.  The barn was built in the 1920s by Mormon homesteaders.  Now it is also in Sue’s collection!

    It was a very windy day on Sunday, which whipped up the fire between Yellowstone and Grand Teton that was almost out, thus closing the road between the parks yet again.  On Tuesday we hope to take that road, so we are now looking at backup plans.

  • Friday in Jackson

    gayle-injacksonWe enjoyed meeting up with Ted’s sister, Gayle, in Jackson Hole, WY for lunch today, along with Nancy Elam, Sue (Hess) Damsen, Gayle’s daughter Heather and Heather’s friend Kaylee.

    When Sue was 10, she took a trip to Yellowstone National Park with her grandparents and the main thing she remembers about Jackson Hole from that trip was this arch made of antlers.  We both remember having a family photo taken here with our sons when they were young during one of our tent-trailer camping trips.

    (Editors comment:  On all new pics I post to this blog, if you click on them, they will open in a larger size format, thanks to the suggestion of one of our most active followers!  Also, we’ve begun updating Sue’s “best of” series on the right side of the blog, so enjoy that also.)

    ts-biking-gt-2Grand Teton National Park is a glorious place to ride a bike, and Sue and I enjoyed another bicycle ride on Friday near Moose, and loved the site of this ranch meadow with the Teton mountains in the background.

    The Teton range of mountains is part of the Rockies in Wyoming within the Grand Teton National Park.  We understand the  Shoshone people once called the whole range Teewinot, meaning “many pinnacles” while the early French voyageurs used the name les trois tétons, meaning the three nipples.  The highest peaks are part of the Cathedral group and the tallest, Grand Teton, measures in at 13,775 feet.

    Click here to enjoy these additional pics of Grand Teton.

  • Grand Teton National Park

    Grand Teton BicyclingWe were assigned spot L75 at Colter Bay Campground, at the end of the loop overlooking the meadow and trees at the edge of the lake.  No one camped between us and the lake, so the view from our camping chairs was a wide-open expanse, broken only by the seldom used road between us.  “M” is the last loop, so being in “L” meant only L&M traffic passed by in front of us, maybe one truck every 30 minutes.  The blue of the water is visible between trees.  This spot is like being in the “D Loop at Pinecrest”, facing the water.  Nice.

    We road bicycles near Jenny Lake on Thursday and enjoyed a picnic lunch by the river while sitting on rocks.  There is no cellular connectivity in the campground, so we must wander over to the laundry and store to get public wifi and check up on things elsewhere in the world.  We also sat at the Jackson Lake Lodge to view sunset and enjoy a drink and snack.  I wish I had a kayak with all this open water.

    Click here to enjoy these additional pics of Grand Teton.

  • Grand Teton Sunset

    We made it to the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming just before sunset on Wednesday, September 7.  It was our longest drive of the trip so far… about 400 miles in one day from Boise to Grand Teton.

    colter-bay-moonrise-grand-tetonWe got a primo site at the Colter Bay campground in the first row overlooking the meadow and lake with no one else in front of us.  Here’s a view of the sunset that Sue took at 6:59 pm.

    Our lunch stop was so memorable in Idaho Falls!  Sue has this gift to search Yelp and find out-of-the-way places that normal travelers would miss.  Sue found “Grandpa’s Southern Bar-B-Q” in the old historic district and, as luck would have it, I got an on-street parking space for the truck and trailer for two-hours!   Sue had the “BBQ Parfait” layered with pulled pork, baked beans and cole slaw, and Ted had pulled-beef sandwich with spicy mashed potatoes.  We enjoyed it with swamp water (pink lemonade and sweet tea) and topped it off with a slice of buttermilk pie and sweet potato pie.  The purveyors — Lloyd and Loretta — were so warm and welcoming and made us feel like family – only we didn’t have to wash the dishes!

    The speed limit in Idaho is 80, but for trucks with five axles or more it is only 70.  And the freeways in Idaho are FAR superior to anything in California.  Trip on!

    T & S