August 17

Time to catch up after several days of not blogging. After leaving the campground along the Little Salmon River we headed both south and east. The temperatures were much cooler even dropping to almost 100 degrees for a daytime high.  Our destination was in the great Ketchum area were we met up with Marsha’s brother and sister in law. We mostly visited with them including eating out together for a couple of nights. We took in an arts festival in Ketchum and headed to some hot springs.  All but me enjoyed the hot springs along a riverbank while I preferred being out in the main flow in the cooler water.

On Sunday we left the Ketchum area meeting Marsha’s high school friend, Jean, and her husband, Brian for lunch in Pocatello. We had not seen them since the mid 1980’s when we bicycled from Utah to Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park and back to Utah. We pushed onward in the direction of Teton National Park to Alpine, WY. Monday we made it to Teton National Park where we stayed for two nights. Of course we checked out another visitor center which helped us orient how to spend our time there.  Marsha was looking for a hike while I was looking for photograph opportunities.

Next morning we were up and out early planning on capturing the first light on the peaks. We arrived at our scouted location about 15 minutes before sunrise. Out of the car with the photography equipment heading to the spot I wanted when we stumbled upon two more moose. I didn’t even stop to photograph them since it would require changing lenses. Onward to the spot and I captured the shot I desired. Then we headed up near Jackson Lodge where we did a hike. As the temperature warmed I was regretting I carried my equipment. We only saw three people while on the hike. It’s a treat to leave the crowds behind, but if you stay with your car in either Teton or Yellowstone you’ll not get much alone time.

Tuesday afternoon we headed to a location I wanted to scope out to catch a photograph of the Teton Mountains reflected in calm water. We found the perfect spot. All that was needed was calm wind, good lighting, and the smoke and haze to leave. While investigating the location at 2:30 in the afternoon we stumbled upon a couple of moose feeding in the water.

Next we headed to Morman Row where there’s to look at the iconic barns with the majestic Tetons in the background. With the haze and smoke the mountains did not pop but I did manage to take a few photos. Then it was time to look for pronghorn and bison. We did find a few pronghorn but no buffalo.

Approaching noon we headed to the Olaus and Mardy Murie homestead. If you have not heard of them you should do a bit of reading about them. They were partly responsible for Teton National Park, the National Elk Refuge and most of the National Parks in Alaska. We spent almost two hours with the docent at the Murie Homestead.

Back to the campground where we ate then I headed out for more photograph while Marsha stayed in the campground for a Ranger led program on pronghorns.

Wednesday morning we headed north to Yellowstone. All the campgrounds were full but we found one outside the park closer to Cody, WY where we arranged to stay for two nights. We checked in at the campsite and started in on chores including laundry and showers, heavenly showers. We last showered at the campground near Ketchum.

After chores we headed back into the Park looking for, in my dreams, wolves. No luck on wolves but got a great view of a golden eagle in perfect lighting. I captured several good shots of the eagle then on to the Lamar Valley. We did see mule deer and a few prong horn and then a bison. Wait, there’s another one. Oh, what is the hold up on the road? More buffalo and more and more buffalo. We saw well over a thousand of them and that’s a conservative estimate. When they decide to cross the road or walk in the road you have no choice but to wait them out. We finally got passed them and headed out the northeast entrance to the park. We ended up getting back to the campground close to eleven in the evening after driving close to 400 miles. It was a long day to say the least. I am not even sure I want to share the horror of stock in the road. Stock in the road, what does that mean. Well, it really means don’t drive at night when you cannot really see the black cattle in the middle of the road. We had a couple of near misses and even a slight hit. We are not traveling fast when around the bend about a dozen cattle were on the road. I hit the brakes and served missing all but one. This road was deserted and I am not sure what would have really happened if we hit the cow full on. What we did was hit the steer with our passenger side mirror. It gets slammed back to the side of the car we see that the steer is not injured. Well, maybe sore where his head made contact with the mirror, but not really hurt.  We pushed the mirror out again and it did not have a mark on it. No broken mirror, nothing. We were LUCKY! So was the steer. As I said, a long day.