Grand Teton National Park

This weekend, Clarise and I headed out to see the Grand Tetons which lie about 100 miles south of where we live in Mammoth Hot Springs.  The Tetons are hands down the most amazingly beautiful things I have ever seen.  My grandma told me before heading to Yellowstone that I needed to check out the Tetons while I was in the area because they were her favorite place to ever visit and she was definitely not wrong.  There are numerous lakes and flower filled meadows surrounding the rugged, glaciated peaks which are the youngest range in the Rockies at only 9 million years old (compared to 70 million years old for most of the rest of the Rockies).

The first day we hiked around Jenny Lake and up to Hidden Falls which were very powerful with numerous twists and turns on the way down the 200 foot falls.  We then traveled south and explored the resort town of Jackson, WY.



One our second day we took a boat ride over picturesque Jenny Lake and hiked into Cascade Canyon which Clarise and I both agreed was the prettiest hike either of us had ever done.  Not to shabby considering between the two of us we've been to the Colorado Rockies, Appalachian Mountains, and Vancouver, Canada to name a few.










We watched a video in one of the visitor centers that talked about the park and what you can do to save it for future generations and when it ends the back wall slowly slides away, revealing a perfectly framed panorama of the real Tetons out of the bay windows.

It is a relatively modern park, founded in 1929 and expanded in 1950.  It was quite the controversy over land rights when they expanded it between the federal government and the ranchers of the area.  So a unique compromise was created stating that current ranchers could continue their business inside the park for as long as they lived but could not pass it down to future generations when they died.  There is a complete bicycle system separate from the road so we are excited to go back another weekend and bring our bikes as the old, narrow roads of Yellowstone do not encourage us to want to ride.