Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming – July 29th & 30th

After watching the Figure 8 racing at the Teton County Fair in Jackson, then having a late night comparing a few travel stories (and vehicles/accommodation) with Wes & Lianna, as we both camped in the driveway, we got going a little later than planned (common theme here?!), but eventually headed to the Grand Teton National Park which is really close to Jackson. While Wes & Lianna were planning to head to a drive through bear park about 1.5 hours away in Idaho, to ensure that they’d see bears, we decided (stupidly!) to take our chances, as surely we’d see some finally in either Grand Teton NP or Yellowstone, which was next on the list! However… Although there is supposed to be a whole heap of wildlife in both parks, Yellowstone in particular, we definitely didn’t see it! Could have possibly had something to do with the fact that there was a whole heap of people and traffic…?

What we did see in Grand Teton included the Teton Mountains as they peeked out from between some clouds, a bunch of bison, the Moulton Barn and other old buildings in Mormon Row over one side of the park, some birds and butterflies, heaps of ground squirrels (which pop in and out of holes in the ground), and some pretty cool views of the mountains from different overlooks near the Snake River.

The Teton Mountains

Bison :)

The barn that we thought was the famous Moulton Barn...

The actual Moulton Barn - apparently the most photographed barn in the world?

There were heaps of these hanging around :)

The Teton mountain range from the Snake River Overlook

Mt Moran from the Oxbow Bend overlook

Then as we were feeling pretty pooped, we found a campsite and settled down for a much needed sleep for a couple of ours, determined that there would be more wildlife out and about later on when we got up! However… when we got up after an hour or 2 it was threatening thunderstorms. But we went for a drive anyway, and ended up seeing not very much at all for quite a while…

How we saw quite a bit of the park...

After that cleared up we drove by Jenny Lake at the south end of the park, and then back to a couple of places we’d been in the afternoon, such as the Oxbow Bend, to see the sun shining through the clouds as it got lower in the sky, but still no wildlife! Lucky the scenery was awesome!

After the sun peeked through again...

Cool colours back at the Oxbow Bend

Oxbow Bend

Tired looking us at Oxbow Bend :)

So we headed back to the campsite and put on several layers of clothing before cooking dinner. Then after waking up in the middle of the night, and thinking about all of the bear warning brochures we had for the park (grizzlies as well as black bears this time), and the bear proof box for food in our individual campsite, we decided to drive to the toilets (yes, very sad, we know) rather than walk, and then kept driving through the park for a while thinking that surely now we’d see a bear or at least something different? Or at least some deer or elk… Turns out the next day while we slept in there was a grizzly bear sighted crossing the road… (but what were the chances of us being at that part at the right time? J) SO from there we headed up through to Yellowstone National Park, stopping every now and then for the road works as they re-sealed the road through the Grand Teton National Park…

Cooking dinner in the cold

Traffic heading out of the park