Week 56: Grand Teton National Park
Wildlife, wildflowers and wild mountains!
Hi, friends! Hello, fam! Welcome back to another weekly update. We spent this week at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming soaking in the mountain views and looking for wildlife — and wow did we find some of both!
Note: I have so much to share that it might be too long for your email and get cut off — if that happens, click on over to view the web version.
On to the recap!
Here’s our map for this week so you can see where we’ve been:
Friday: A Night in the High Desert
I’ll pick up where left off last week, at Rocky Mountain National Park. We exited the park near the west entrance (point A on the map), then headed for Rawlins, Wyoming — our first new state in a while! We crossed the Continental Divide a bunch of times and it was pretty cool after seeing it at Rocky.
After stocking up on groceries we headed to a dispersed camping spot about 20 miles outside the city off Oil to Mines Road on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land at about 7,000 feet in elevation. J found it using the iOverlander app — it’s a pretty handy app, although there have been some recent annoying changes to it.
It was super windy and 92 degrees when we got here, but as the wind settled down it got so peaceful and quiet. The birds started singing goodnight and it was really lovely.
We went for a little walk and climbed up a nearby mesa to watch the sunset — what a view:
The sky seemed to go on forever.
As soon as the sun went down it cooled off quick, whew! We zonked hard after that long day!
The next morning I somehow woke up for sunrise — this was the view from my pillow:
I had to do a little botanizing before we headed out — there were so many cool plants all around, including these prickly pear cacti:
Then we hiked a bit of the Continental Divide Trail or CDT — just had to be done. So now we can say we hiked a tiny fraction of the 3,100 mile long CDT, ha!
Then it was off to the Tetons!
Saturday: Grand Teton National Park
After another really long drive we made it to Grand Teton National Park! Woo hoo! I’ve wanted to come here forever!
Look how different it was from where we woke up that morning — that’s vanlife for ya!
We stayed in Colter Bay Campground this week, and our campsite was just a short walk to the beach — so of course we had to check it out and watch the sunset:
There were only a few other people at the beach so it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. We stayed as long as we could, but a cold wind was blowing off the lake and we started freezing! Brrr!
Sunday: A Much Needed Rest Day
The weather forecast called for a high of 41 and a wintery mix of SNOW (!) and rain off and on all day, so we decided to hang in camp for a much needed rest day.
It was super hard to be here in the park and not go hiking, but we really needed it after last week. Plus we came down with a bug while we were at Rocky and we were still recovering from that too. (People always ask how we manage to get sick when we’re out in nature so much — we think we got it this time on the crowded shuttle bus when we hiked Bear Lake — the lady sitting next to Jason kept sneezing and blowing her nose, argh.)
I took advantage of the break to cook some Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stallard heirloom beans that my friend Sally gave me when we visited her back in January — thanks, Sally!
They turned out so good! And can confirm that we did get snow — crazy! Family in Ohio were having a heat wave at the time with temps in the 90s, so it was doubly mind boggling.
Monday: Hike from Camp
Monday we decided to take it easy and just do a short hike from camp. First we went down to Colter Bay again — and then we hiked around the bay and up to Swan Lake and over to Heron Pond. The views did not disappoint:
As I was writing this post I read the trail web page and had to laugh at the photo on the park service website — it looks like the same view as the one I took! Too funny.
Tuesday: Driving the Park
Tuesday dawned bright and sunny so we just HAD to go for a drive and see more of the park, doing some short hikes along the way.
First off, a bit about the park. The Teton Range contains some of the oldest rocks in North America, but they’re also some of the youngest mountains in North America, rising to 13,000 feet over the valley floor, which is around 7,000 feet. Crazy cool! Read more about the Tetons on the park website.
Bears!
Our first stop was the Willow Flats Overlook where a volunteer was giving a talk about BEARS!
We learned so much about how to tell grizzlies from from black bears — and more.
Grizzly characteristics to look for:
“Dished” face — the face has a curve to it
Shoulder hump, which is a huge muscle developed from digging. They dig out their own dens and also dig for grubs/insects.
Long claws — if you see bear prints and the claw marks are away from the toe prints then it’s a grizzly
Grizzlies can be black or cinnamon colored
Black bears:
Have flat faces
Bigger ears
No shoulder hump
Aren’t always black — they can be brown or cinnamon colored!
A few other things I learned:
Carry bear spray when out and about away from crowded touristy locations. Have it within reach, not in your pack. When we hiked to Heron Pond I had it stuffed in my pants pocket since there was a grizzly sighted in the campground. Gotta come up with a handier solution.
Wait until a bear begins to charge before spraying, and then aim at its feet. I never knew that before. The goal is to do a burst of spray and create a cloud that the bear has to run through before it can get to you. Be sure to check the wind direction.
When you’re having a snack or picnic, have a plan to quickly gather up all of the food if you see a bear. Bears are smart and can learn to associate high calorie, easy to obtain food with humans in no time. The volunteer said she witnessed a family having a picnic and as a bear approached they took off and left the food, which the bear ate. She said the very next day she saw the bear scouting picnic tables and it turned into a problem bear. As the saying goes, “a fed bear is a dead bear”. Don’t feed wildlife, especially bears!
Thanks again to the wonderful volunteer for sharing her time and knowledge.
Signal Mountain
Then it was on to Signal Mountain to take in the views. We found a parking spot at the first overlook so jumped in and did a quick hike out to an overlook:
Then we hiked further up the mountain instead of driving so we wouldn’t lose our parking spot — and the views got even better!
That storm off in the distance made me edgy, so we didn’t linger long.
Wish we could have stayed longer!
Stormy Tetons
There weren’t many people at the Potholes Turnout so we thought it would be a great place to go for a quick hike and then have lunch.
From the park website:
Potholes, also known as kettles, are depressions in the glacial outwash plain. A pothole forms when an ice chunk breaks off a retreating glacier and lands on the plain. Run-off sediments deposit around the ice and may bury the ice. After the ice melts, a depression is left behind. This depression forms a micro-environment trapping moisture and dust allowing trees to take root.
We hiked fast to the first pothole, keeping a close eye on the approaching storm.
It was pretty neat being down in the pothole and seeing the glacial rocks — look at the mountains in the distance for perspective of how deep it was — it’s hard to show the scale in a photo.
I wish you could smell the sagebrush — the light gray/green plant in the foreground — it smelled amazing with the approaching storm:
We made it back to the van just as it started raining — whew!
Then we were treated to these cool clouds. Whoa!
Jenny Lake
The storm blew itself out pretty fast, so we resumed our drive, stopping by Jenny Lake. We thought we’d come back again later so I didn’t take many photos.
Little did we know that would be our one and only time there this trip, darn! The rain must have drove everyone away that day. Every other time we went by the parking lot was completely filled and people were parked for a half mile up and down the road.
A Trio of Elk!
As we were driving along a guy started waving at us and pointing off in the distance — I started scanning and saw elk! Woo hoo! Here’s a zoomed in photo:
I had to stop nearby for this shot of scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata) that was blooming all over the park:
We seemed to have hit the wildflowers just right!
Snake River Overlook
Next we stopped by the Snake River Overlook to see if there were any moose. We didn’t see any, but look at this view:
One of the signs had this quote by Ansel Adams that really seems to capture the spirit of the park:
“The grand lift of the Tetons is more than a mechanistic fold and faulting of the earth’s crust; it becomes a prima gesture of the earth beneath a great sky.” — Ansel Adams
Spread Creek
Our next stop on the hunt for moose was along Spread Creek. Still no moose. Another amazing view though:
Bison! Bison!
As we were watching the sunset from the Elk Ranch Flats Turnout, I happened to look away from the Tetons for a bit and saw some brown dots off in the distance. I grabbed the binoculars to see what they were — and here it was a herd of bison!
J checked the map and found a road that would take us closer to them, so off we went.
It was so magical seeing them against the sunset sky. (Note: we stayed in the van at all times and zoomed in on the bison.)
We could hear them eating and walking through the grasses. Just so amazing.
I’ll treasure this memory forever.
Pronghorn!
It’s always cool to see pronghorn! They looked so small after just seeing the bison.
Sunset at the Oxbow Bend Overlook
As we were driving back to camp we just had to stop for one last look at the Snake River at the Oxbow Bend Overlook.
What a great ending to a great day.
Wednesday: Camp Day
We didn’t get back from our adventures yesterday until 10 pm, and we slept in and didn’t have breakfast until 11 am! (Brunch?) So we decided to have an easy day again. We really needed that!
Thursday: Taggart and Bradley Lake Hike
I did a bunch of research before we got to the Tetons and I was initially planning to hike Cascade Canyon, but we still weren’t at 100% and didn’t feel good enough to wake up super early to catch the ferry, fight the crowds, and hike 9 miles. So we ended doing the Taggart Lake- Bradley Lake Loop instead, for 7 miles on the day.
It was an amazing hike!
There were views of the Tetons almost the whole hike.
We had lunch at Bradley Lake, and a sudden shower came up and sprinkled us — felt so good!
Then it was on to Taggart Lake, where we saw a marten!
We highly recommend this hike.
Friday: Camp Day at Coulter Bay
Our time at Grand Teton National Park was coming to a close, so we decided to have another camp day and soak it all in — literally! First I put my water shoes on and soaked my feet in the lake — it was really cold so I didn’t want to go swimming, ha!
Then I filled my waterbrush with lake water and did a sketch of Grand Teton Peak:
This was the first time I ever sketched a mountain next to a lake that had been gouged by a glacier — it was so fun getting to use all those blues!
Then we took the short 5 minute walk back to camp, had dinner, and came back for sunset.
I’m really gonna miss this special place.
Saturday: Town Day
Saturday was another exhausting day. We did chores around camp and then headed to town where we got groceries and did laundry, then dumped gray water and filled the fresh water tanks. We didn’t get to bed until almost midnight. Whew!
Art News!
In art news, I’m super stoked to finally get to share the new Explore Palettes from Art Toolkit this week! It’s been hard to keep them under wraps!
They sent me the palettes a few months ago to play with, and I can’t stop using them.
You can read about my first impressions of the palettes here on the Art Toolkit blog.
They’re so well thought out and the colors all work together. If you’re just getting into watercolor or you’d like to try DaVinci paints these are great palettes.
As many of you know, I’m an ambassador for Art Toolkit and they’ve given me a discount code to share with you: use code LISAFAN10 for 10% off your purchase of an ArtToolkit, palette — including the new Explore Palettes, or mixing pans.
Off to Yellowstone!
That’s a wrap for this week! We’re off to Yellowstone National Park next, where I’m actually finishing up this post in camp. We’ve only been here one day and we’ve already seen so much — can’t wait to share!
Until next week — Lisa, Jason, and Walter-the-Van
Hi Lisa,
As always, love your blog, experiences, photos and art! Also love Art Toolkit supplies!
Please tell me what camera you use to take your photos.
Happy Traveling!
Lee
This trip looks insane!! 🥾