Grand Teton National Park

We promised you some photos from Teton and today's the day! Some of these photos are Joyce's and some are Ron's (no fair guessing that all the best ones are Ron's!). The one above is from Oxbow overlook. The Snake River doubled back on itself and eventually the bend was cut off by a shorter route for the river leaving this calm water.

We've seen plenty of wildlife -- most of it on the same day. The first wildlife jam (traffic jam because people are looking at animals) we came to was for this moose mama and her little calf.

Next we came to an even bigger jam for this grizzly sow and her three cubs. Eventually the rangers heard about the jam and came pouring in to observe the bear (what can you do about something at the top of the food chain who isn't afraid of people?) but mostly to control traffic and try to keep us visitors from becoming mauling victims. They told us that this mama is 10 years old and the cubs were born this winter. Her last cub was born two years ago but another bear killed it. This time she and the cubs are doing well. She wears a radio collar as part of the tracking program for endangered species.

Mom was grubbing around for worms and insects -- a significant portion of their diet. The cubs mostly played around. In the last couple of days she had killed a couple of elk calves to feed her three babies.

We stayed for a long time and eventually moved on. The wildlife jam was good training for what we hope to encounter in Yellowstone in the next couple of weeks.

We got up one morning at 4:25 a.m. (yes, that is in the morning) so that we could be at Schwabacher Landing at sunrise. Not really being that good at planning, we went when sunrise is absolutely the earliest it is all year: 5:41 a.m. -- next time, maybe we'll choose December so we can sleep in! The sunrise wasn't as colorful over the mountains as we had hoped but the scene was lovely and we enjoyed it nevertheless.

There was more color to the north, but not much in the way of peaks there!

On another visit to Schwabacher during the middle of the day we encountered hundreds of butterflies. Most were blue-violet in color but we also found these colorful beauties.


The two above and below are also from Schwabacher. The above is our tribute to the unknown photographer.


One of our very favorite places for photography is Mormon Row, named for the early Mormon settlers who build the buildings that are still (barely) standing. We visited here a couple of times, too. The first day there were a number of painters and the second time, early in the morning, there were a number of other photographers.

That would pretty much be the view when the settlers were there: Little house, big prairie, big mountains.

This barn is a favorite with the painters.

The machinery appeared to have been sitting here just too long.

There are three barns still standing in all. Below is a close-up of the barn above.


Joyce was under constant observation while taking photos. Yes, yes, there are those that would argue that she needs that supervision all the time! Eventually the job became too big for any one ground squirel and two had to watch her at the same time, one with the right eye and one with the left.


I'm sure Kodak mourns the introduction of digital cameras: We would have used up a lot of their film on these barns if we had it.

There are a number of private ranches still inside the boundaries of the park including this scenic one.

We'll leave you with another image of the Oxbow. We have so many wonderful photos and we just selected a few for you. Hope you enjoyed them.