After our detour into Idaho, we finally arrived at Grand Teton National Park in western Wyoming a week before Labor Day. This amazing spot would be where we'd stay through the last holiday weekend of the summer. There really aren't enough superlatives to describe these mountains, rising as they do seemingly out of nowhere, rather than peeking from behind foothills. BAM! They are there and in your face, huge and rocky, with some bits of snow and ice clinging to the highest peaks even in August. If you don't gasp the first time you see the Teton range, you are either blind or very, very jaded. For me, seeing the Tetons was similar to my first look at the Grand Canyon. As I often say, photos just don't do them justice! Barry had visited this park as a boy when his family camped at Jenny Lake, and he wanted me to see what he remembered fondly. I honestly had never even heard of this park until recently as it just isn't talked about as much as some of the more popular parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite. But to me it was even more impressive than Yellowstone. And I haven't been to Yosemite yet to compare (one day!) We arrived at Gros Ventre Campground on a Monday around lunchtime which allowed us a great choice of sites. All sites are first-come first-served here. Gros Ventre is French and means "big belly", which made me laugh. This is the closest campground in GTNP to the city of Jackson, so very convenient. There are a number of loops in Gros Ventre, only one of which with electric hookups; the others are all dry camping. One loop is for tenters only, and one for employees only. Loops A through C allow generator usage during non-quiet hours. We chose to boondock (dry camp) because at $13/night (half price) with Barry’s Senior Access pass, the value was unbeatable, especially considering that the electric loop sites are $39 with a pass and $51 without! That is by far the largest premium we have ever encountered for an electric hookup. Amazingly, the electric loop (D) was full. We chose to save the money and run the generator now and then as needed. It wasn't hot enough for air conditioning while we were there (around Labor Day weekend) anyway. Sites are wildly varied here, from very small for tenters and truck campers to large enough for big rigs. We chose a site in the "A" loop with a view of the Tetons, even the tallest of the bunch, Grand Teton Mountain itself. Just gorgeous! Every morning when we opened Pearl's front curtains, it was startling to see the glorious topography right in front of us. Here's the view from our site. Grand Teton is the very highest peak behind the hill in front. Our site was a little tight side to side, but we did manage to just barely fit our screen room next to Pearl to defy the flies when we ate meals outside. We didn't see as much wildlife here as we saw in Yellowstone and not a single moose, though we'd read that they often show up in this campground. However, there were lots of birds we enjoyed watching; in particular a huge number of beautiful Mountain Bluebirds. We also saw a gorgeous Mule Deer in the campground one evening, and I enjoyed watching the many small chipmunks running around as well. The wonderful bicycling made up for any lack of wildlife; so stay tuned for more on that.
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We had it all planned out. After a week in Yellowstone, we'd drop down on Highway 89 into Grand Teton National Park and spend a week there enjoying what we'd read was much better bicycling infrastructure along with crazily beautiful views of the Teton mountains. We couldn't wait. But Mother Nature had other ideas. While we were in Yellowstone, the Berry Fire, one of the wildfires in this two-national-park area of western Wyoming, grew to the point that the NPS had to close Highway 89 just south of Yellowstone and the south entrance to Yellowstone/north entrance to Grand Teton. Blasted! Here's an article on the fire and road closure with maps and photos: http://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/27/south-entrance-to-yellowstone-still-closed-by-berry-fire/ Since we had already done all we could do in Yellowstone without a car or taking more expensive tours, we'd actually been ready to head to Grand Teton before our week in Yellowstone was even up. Since the road was closed, we stuck it out for a full week, but when our week was up, on a Sunday, we were going to leave no matter what. The road was still closed on Sunday. Our only real alternative was to drive to the west entrance of Yellowstone and into Idaho, spend one night, then head up in to Grand Teton National Park from the south side. So, that's what we did. There was much more driving involved, but we did get to add another state to our map of where Pearl has slept (see right sidebar). We stayed at Wakeside Lake RV Park in Rexburg, which was a nice spot with huge pull-through campsites with full hookups (nice after boondocking for a week in Yellowstone) on a small lake. It was only about half full, so we had plenty of space. With our Good Sam discount, we paid $30 for a full hookup site with 30 amp service. There was a large laundromat on site that we did not use. Restrooms with showers looked very clean. The only real negative of this park was road noise from Highway 20. The park is conveniently located near the highway, which gets a lot of truck traffic. This bothered our sleeping occasionally. There are normally lots of activities on the lake: kayak and SUP rentals, wakeboarding, and fishing, but on a Sunday, the rental spot was closed, and that made for a quiet afternoon -- perfect. We were able to walk the trail around the lake with Paisley and simply enjoy the view. There was even a nice empty field right behind the campsites where we could throw Paisley's ball, a real plus. Just when we were so excited to have full hookups, though, bad luck found us. Sometime in the wee hours, the electricity went out. When we got up and investigated, the water was out too. The RV park had an electric water pump, and as we found out from the host, electricity was out to not only the park but a good portion of Rexburg. Oh boy! We badly needed to pump out our gray and black tanks so needed the water more than we needed the electricity. But it was not to be. We did drain the tanks but were not able to do a tank flush as we normally like to do. The problem was certainly no reflection on the park but just more bad luck, just as with the wildfire blocking the shorter route to Grand Teton. We hoped this run of bad luck would be over soon. We did have some beautiful views on the way to Grand Teton as we passed the huge Palisades Reservoir -- and saw some lovely fall foliage, shades of things to come. Stay tuned as we finally make it into Grand Teton National Park!
Yellowstone has a well-earned reputation for hosting a wide variety of wildlife. We did not see any bears or wolves in the part of the park where we camped, but we did see the beautiful bull elk pictured in our previous post in a treed area right outside our campground loop. Bison, singly and in small herds, were frequent visitors to the C loop at our campground (Bridge Bay). When they came through at Theodore Roosevelt National Park earlier this summer, we were astonished, but now they seemed less scary. They never seemed to pay us any attention; we just moved slowly and didn't approach them. I will say that I'm glad they are vegetarians! Look closely to the left of this shot and you will see a calf nursing -- and big daddy standing guard. Such a treat to see, and right outside our motorhome! Also at the campground and while walking or riding our bikes we saw numerous birds, occasional mule deer, and had fun watching a lone coyote hunting and catching numerous rodents. Her hunting style was impeccable! Next up, we journey on to Grand Teton National Park, though a road closure forced us to take the long way, through Idaho, to get there!
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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