The Tetons

On Sunday, June 2, 2013, we caught the 10:29 a.m. Frontier flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Denver, and there, after an uneventful flight, we caught the 12:50 p.m. flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, arriving around 2:10.  Hertz, Avis and, I think, Budget have desks and cars at the airport, but Thrifty, with which we had a reservation, has a shuttle van, which drove the four-and-a-half miles south into the town of Jackson (the airport is actually in Grand Teton National Park), through the town and out the other side.  The Thrifty car rental office was in a sort of shack, behind some other buildings at the western edge of Jackson.  Since they had no small cars available, we were upgraded to a charcoal gray Nissan Altima, with only 125 miles on it: very comfortable.

 The weather was very nice, mid-70s and partly cloudy.  We drove up to Moose in about half an hour, and went into the National Park's Craig Thomas Visitor Center, where we asked a ranger about hikes and drives in the Park.  We had hoped to take the Jenny Lake morning ranger walk to Inspiration Point, but there are no ranger walks until June 10.  The Park's website and other information had had no schedule as to when ranger walks would start for the summer season--this may have had something to do with the federal government's budget sequestration, which has resulted in certain service cutbacks both here and in Yellowstone.  Or maybe ranger walks and talks just get started later in Grand Teton than in Yellowstone.

In any case, since I'm now 62, I stopped at the permit desk and got a permanent Senior Pass card to all the National Parks, etc., for $10.

We drove out the Moose-Wilson Road, looking for moose, but not seeing any.  We stopped at the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve Center, which is a wonderful place, more of a library and nature-meditation center than a visitor center for a nature preserve, though it is that, too.  The Rockefeller family were heavily involved in the 1950 expansion of the Park (see Ken Burns's wonderful TV series on the National Parks for details).

On our way back to Moose, we came to a spot where there were a number of cars lined up on both sides of the road.  In these parks, that is an invariable sign that someone has sighted wildlife.  We followed people down a path to the creek, where, sure enough, about a dozen avid photographers were standing well back from the water, taking pictures of a female (cow) moose, standing in the middle of the stream, unconcernedly dipping her head into the water for food or drink.  After a while, she walked over to the opposite bank, clambered up out of the water and strolled into the woods, out of sight.  So all the tourists went back up the path to the road, got into their cars and drove off.

Back at Moose, we turned onto the Teton Park Road and headed north.  The views of the mountains were truly spectacular.  At times, we were driving straight towards them.  At other times, we were passing along their base and would stop at turnouts to view them and (of course) take pictures.

The Grand Teton range (named by imaginative French beaver trappers in honor of the mountains' supposed resemblance to certain parts of female anatomy), resulted from the cracking of the earth's surface due to west-east tectonic pressures about nine million years ago, leading to uplift on the west side of the fault and dropping on the east side of the fault.  The resulting valley was largely filled in with dirt by glaciation and other erosion, so that now there are a series of glacial lakes at the foot of mountains, which rise to altitudes of 10,000 to 13,000 feet (3,000 to 4,000 meters) nearly straight up over a valley that has an altitude of only 6,200 feet (less than 2,000 meters).  Through this valley, coming out of the largest of the lakes, Jackson Lake, is the Snake River, which eventually flows into the Columbia River, which flows into the Pacific.

We checked into a "cabin" (really a 1950s motel room at the end of a block of four or five, in the woods) at the Jackson Lake Lodge.  The main lodge building has a lobby with huge picture windows directed head-on at Mt. Moran, to the southwest across willow flats (moose habitat) and the lake.  At 7 o'clock we had dinner at the Lodge's principal restaurant, the Mural Room. Our table for two was right at the windows, with the Tetons hovering over us, distracting us from eating.  Mary Joy had local Idaho red trout (from just over those mountains, as our waiter said), whose flesh had a pink color, like salmon.  I had coq au vin.  We agreed that the food was good, but not great--you pay for the view more than anything.

After dinner, we went out to the lobby to watch the sun set behind the mountains.  There was a very good pianist there, noodling around in a George Winston manner.  A staff person carried around a tray of cookies, without charge.  There are sofas, with upholstery in American Indian patterns, and two huge corner fireplaces.  But we were feeling tired after a long day, and went back to our simple but comfortable room.