Grand! Grand! Grand!
 Part I

The Majesty of the Tetons

The Trip – Day 17

Rexburg, Idaho – Dubois, Wyoming

The Grand Tetons National Park

195 miles 

When planning this trip, in paring down the twenty plus parks on our long list of places to visit, it was a toss-up between Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. The Yellowstone website warned of major road repair during the summer of 2016, and any in-the-park lodging would had to have been booked a year in advance. Fearing a 160 mile traffic jam if we tried to do Yellowstone as a drive-through, we struck it from our list and opted instead to check out the nearby Grand Tetons. Great decision! The Grand Tetons National Park was to become my favorite place on our road trip. It had snow-capped mountains, clear lakes, easy hiking trails, non-stop vistas, and encounters with people who had interesting stories. I've combined two days of travel into a single post twice now, but this is the first time I feel obligated to split one day of travel reporting into two days of posts. Part I will be about the drop-dead beauty of the Grand Teton area itself; Part II will be about people encounters.

"Back" of the Tetons, in Idaho, approaching the Teton Pass

We set out early in the morning from Rexburg, headed toward the Teton Pass, a steep, twisty, non-interstate road that would take us into Jackson, Wyoming, and the entrance to the Grand Tetons National Park. We saw the “back” of the signature Teton peaks approaching us as we drove through what remained of Idaho. A scenic drive itself, this route took us through a river valley before entering the mountain pass overlooking Jackson Hole, the valley below the Grand Tetons. The most iconic section of the Teton range was once a single mountain, but ages of erosion created the craggy individual peaks that exist today. Part of the incredible majesty of the Tetons is that they are viewed from the Snake River “valley” running along their base. Despite the already 6,200+ feet of elevation of the valley, the mountains appear to soar up higher than their 7,000+ feet from the valley floor. That, along with the pine-covered mountains rising into rocky, snow-capped peaks (more accurately, glacier-capped peaks), make for breathtakingly spectacular views. While the red rocks and canyons of Zion and the Grand Canyon had shouted loudly of God's grandeur, as did the granite cliffs and waterfalls of Yosemite, the Grand Tetons speak in a loud hush of His power and beauty and creative ability. ("...awe...some...")

THE Grand Teton

We spent the day driving the length of the park, about 50 miles of non-stop scenic views, going from overlook to overlook, stopping at a tiny historic village, hiking along some of the valley lakes, and soaking in the incredible mountain vistas. The weather was perfect – cool and clear – making for some of the most pleasant hiking of the trip. We started out at a small historic village, Menor's Homestead and Ferry, consisting of a small general store, a cabin, a barn and a few out buildings along the Snake River. There was a replica of the ferry used to take people across the Snake in the early 1900s, one that would be used later in the summer to take visitors across the river in the same fashion. The docent at the general store had just baked a batch of peanut butter cookies in the store's old fashioned oven and was giving out the still-warm treats to the visitors as they came through. The barn housed a covered wagon and other modes of transportation from the era. Nearby the little village was the Chapel of the Transfiguration, a small log cabin church built in the 1920s, still functioning as an Episcopal place of worship each Sunday.

Chapel of the Transfiguration

The ferry

Menor's General Store

Farther up the road we found a picnic area to eat our hikers' lunch and afterward walked along a lake path, a varied, relatively level trail, sometimes wooded, sometimes open, following the shore of long, skinny String Lake, a crystal clear body of water. There were swimmers and kayakers along some sections of it, and nothing but waterbirds along other sections of it, and the endless Teton range along all of it. We walked as far as the rocky stream that joined String Lake to the larger Leigh Lake, sharing the path with canoers who were portaging from one lake to the other. We returned to the picnic area along the same path, but now seeing that mountain range I couldn't get enough of from the opposite direction.

String Lake

Looking toward Leigh Lake

Coulter Bay, off of Jackson Lake

Tailwaters of the Jackson Lake Dam

We did a bit more driving along the park road, traveling up to the Jackson Lake Dam, where the Snake River, having entered the large and beautiful Jackson Lake 15 miles to the north, flows out of the lake before continuing south to Jackson Hole. The tailwaters of the dam were lined with fisherpersons, some women, many with fly rods. This would not be the last time during our trek through Wyoming that I would regret not having stashed a fly rod in the trunk of the car, “just in case”. We continued up Jackson Lake to Coulter Bay Village, a peninsula with a marina and walking trails and more views of the lake and, of course, those ever-present mountains. Alas, it was getting late and we still had 60 miles to drive to our motel, so we had to forego the hike along the peninsula and head east. The drive out away from the park and into the western part of Wyoming was scenic in its own way, weaning us gently off the overwhelming beauty we had been surrounded with all day. The state route followed the Wind River to the small town of Dubois, our stop for the night, screaming “Trout!” most of the way, though my husband didn't seem to hear it. The Trail's End Motel, an old-fashioned log cabin strip motel in Dubois, had a somewhat small, but wonderfully clean and cool room with such a beautiful deck area along the same Wind River (still screaming “Trout!” at me, and now whispering “Fishing without a license doesn't really make you a poacher...”) that I forgave it for the gun shop they had attached to the main lobby. 

Wyoming, east of the park

 

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next:

Grand! Grand! Grand!
 Part II

Stories on the Road

The Trip – Day 17

Rexburg, Idaho – Dubois, Wyoming

The Grand Tetons National Park

195 miles