Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Our Last Day in the Tetons!

 Thursday was our last day in the Tetons.   We got the day off to a great start...Cohen and I walked up to the square to Starbucks.  I had been missing my iced coffees!  On our way we were saying how pretty the leaves were.  It was so fun getting to see some bright fall colors.  






A view of our hotel The Lexington

Got to love that lipstick in my mask!

Our first stop of the day was at Teton village.  We thought the kids would enjoy seeing the ski part of Jackson Hole.  I can remember riding up the lift when my family first came in the summer.  Because of covid everything was pretty much closed so instead they enjoyed a few minutes of playing on the playground. 


Throughout the whole trip Kate was the one child neither of us had pictures with!  Had to make up for that.

After leaving Teton Village we were just planning to ride some of the loops inside the park to see if we could see animals.  We made stops at scenic overlooks and also made a stop at Mormon Row.  IT was pretty neat seeing the location where these settlers stopped and built homes so many years ago.  Can you imagine having the Tetons as your backyard view?!




We drove through a small "town" called Kelly so once I saw this sign we had to stop!

Enter at your own risk

As we were driving Kelly started looking into a field and sure enough spotted a black dot.  He pulled over and took the binoculars and we were pretty sure it was a moose.  So we drove to a parking lot close and saw a trail hiking out to this field and decided to walk out and see the moose.  I mean a moose is always cool to see.  It almost freaked me out a little thinking we might walk up on this moose with no one else around.  From the road it was almost impossible to spot and how Kelly did I'll never know.  He seems to have a 6th sense.  So we hiked out into this field and after a while sure enough we found the moose!  We did keep our distance because this female spotted us as soon as we saw her.  I didn't want to take my chances with a moose either but I did get a good picture of her. 



We had a "back of the car" picnic and continued on our way.  Even now (a month later) I look back at how fun those picnic lunches were and I hope the kids remember the little things like that too.  Our last little drive of the day proved to be worthwhile.  We actually went back down one that we had already drove down earlier since now we were on our way back to the hotel.  When we parked and got out some kids were telling us that a bear was sleeping at the bottom of a tree. Sure enough you could walk out and look down and see this bear sleeping at the base of the tree.  All you could see good was a big ball of fur.  Every now and then the bear would move but then would quickly go back to sleep.  The pictures we took didn't really show it well since it was a ball of fur but we enjoyed another bear sighting.


Just down the road from this bear sighting we met a crowd of cars and there was another bear!  This particular bear was climbing up the tree eating.  He put on quite the show for everyone!








We definitely had a successful trip in our eyes seeing so many animals.  We loved it, the kids loved it.   After we got back to our hotel we decided to walk into town to do a little shopping and then eat.  As we were walking we ran into our friends!  I had been texting with Bridgett throughout our trips because we both knew we were going to be out there.  I'm so glad we got to see them! Of course this called for a picture.




Friday we were packed and ready to come home.  On the way to the airport we saw another moose just off the side of the road.  We probably could have stopped to get good pictures but we didn't.  We looked from the car and headed on to the Jackson Hole airport.  I can't say enough on how much we enjoyed our trip.  We saw so many neat things and I hope this is something the kids will look back and remember.  Its such a crazy time to travel but at the same time it was so nice to have smaller crowds and we felt safe the entire time.  So many good memories made!  

One last picture!



Headed home!






Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Grand Teton National Park (Day 6)

 


Wednesday we made our way through Grand Teton National Park.  Excuse the overload of pictures of the mountains but they were just so pretty.  Every where you went it was another viewpoint and all were just too pretty.  We hiked a little and drove a lot.  We had great luck seeing animals and that part was pretty exciting for all of us.  One of the first ones we saw were the pronghorn deer/antelope.  







This is as far as the first hike got us...I laughed & made them stand by this tree


Stare off



Beautiful backdrop behind this one








We stopped for a picnic at Jenny Lake.  It was pretty windy though so it was a quick stop!




We drove to the top of Signal Mountain and got a great view from the top!





On the way down these 2 tried to walk and see if they could spot an animal.  We were hoping for a bear or moose!


Spotted-2 real wild animals

We kept driving and after a quick bathroom stop we spotted our next animal for the day, one we had not seen yet...a coyote.  We tried to tell the kids that this is one that we have a lot of at home we just usually hear them not see them!



After seeing the coyote we turned around to head back when Kelly decided to go down this dirt road.  We had gone a ways down it and met no cars,  and finally got to the end and there were cars parked all along the dirt road.  We knew something must be going on and as we got closer and parked we saw all the cameras set up.  A guy walking by us told us it was a grizzly bear!  This was what we had hoped to see!  There is quite a following on some of these bears and someone told me this bear was named Blondie.  We watched this bear for probably an hour and it ate the entire time.  It did get a lot closer to us and a ranger would ask everyone to keep stepping back.  They want 30 yards between you and the bear.  Blondie didn't seemed to phased by us, which I think we were in her backyard so she was pretty comfortable.  It was so neat watching her and I felt like our animal check list was complete!  Sure there were more we could see but the big ones we had all hoped to see we now had!








After we left the bear it was time to head back.  We wanted to stop at Schwabacher's Landing because we knew from our first day that this was a beautiful place to watch a sunset.  You could see the reflection of the Teton's in the water here too!  I had pictures on my camera, pictures on my phone, it was just so pretty!






I'm not sure how much prettier it gets!  We headed back to the car, where we found that one of the kids had left the door wide open, but thankfully no one decided to steal anything.  Isn't that fun.  We were ready to eat (like always), and walked back into town.  We also got a picture in town under the pink lit up antler archway.  They had one all pink for breast cancer awareness.  Fun end to a fun day!