August 27, 2004 - Lake Sawyer, WA - 2

The Visitor Center in Jackson Hole had lots of wildlife for us to enjoy, even if they were bronze.

This noisy male red-winged black bird was attentive toward his mate and their offspring, and let us know in no uncertain terms that we were too close to his home for comfort.

Mama duck seemed unconcerned, but she did sort of hang around.  Sod roofs aren't limited to Alaska I guess, as there were several on the visitor center.  Nice building, well laid out.

We'd been keeping our eyes peeled for elk, but hadn't seen any.  Figured we'd better catch these guys while we could.  And that young wolf got shot for killing farmers sheep!  Nice mount.  I was glad the center didn't try to downplay the damage wolves do to domestic herds.  Nor did they portray the wolf as the "big bad wolf" either.  Very balanced in my opinion.

We've seen lots of chandeliers built out of antlers, and if we had a house, I'd try to fit one in someplace.  This is a nice example of one.  Any doubt why this bunny is called a snowshoe rabbit?  Just look at those feet!

Outside was a "wetlands" arrangement, and this "yellow-chested bird" was scurrying around nailing bugs.

I may have been carrying the camera, but Barb was with me "encouraging" me to take pictures of some flowers.  And then once up on the walkway we found why that mama duck was hanging around.  Her clutch of 7 eggs were not very well hidden near the edge of the walkway.

This bird, appropriately named yellow-headed blackbird, was in constant motion, putting on quite a show for us.  I was using John's long lens, and I hadn't quite mastered the focusing part yet, as you can see.  Seemed to be protecting something.

After lots of searching, we found the cause of the blackbirds concern.  A fledgling out of its nest.  Then off to town we went.  Couldn't pass up this sign.  Can't vouch for the food as we didn't eat there, but the name sure caught our eye.

Any questions about what this town does in the winter?  These buckets/baskets of flowers were all over town, and Barb and Bettye both enjoyed them.  We were heading to a place Dean and Bettye remembered from a past trip for lunch.

Ride 'em Barb!  Fun bar stools, but not sure I'd be all that comfortable on them.  Which is fair.  I'm no cowboy!

This Bison isn't going anywhere, and neither is Dean.  The Bison is dead, and Dean is dead to the world.  Shopping can wear a guy out, don't you know.  What fun people to go poking around with.  Not sure what we'd done with John at this point, but he's somewhere, I'm sure.

Not sure what it cost to go for a ride in the mail coach, but we enjoyed looking at it anyway.  And here come the clouds!  Wonder if we'll get any rain....

If it rained, it missed us.  And now maybe we'll see some elk, eh?  Easy to see how this place got its name.  Flatter than a pancake in the valley, with mountains all around.

We got to the view point, but as you can see from the back of John's Jeep, it's not a paved road.

Good views from any angle.  It was about here that we decided that we'd never be able to see all this National Park has to offer in one trip either.  Simply added it to the list of parks we want to go back to someday.  There we are, Dave & Barb, John, and Bettye and Dean.

There's some evidence that this valley wasn't totally formed by glaciers, and Dean doing what he loves with Barb taking instructions.  Dean publishes journals of their summer exploits into this area every year, and recently this WWII vet took up digital photography.  He was into photography already, building a book on WY wildflowers.  Now with the digital, he's having even more fun.  His camera is the latest Canon, John's Canon is its predecessor, and mine is the predecessor to John's.  Needless to say, we had some fun with all that.  But actually, we mostly spent time outside hiking/driving around enjoying this area.  By the time we'd get home, we were all bushed, and just ate and went to bed so we could start all over again the next day.  Never even did any trout fishing.  Too much to see/do and too little time.  We gotta retire or something.

The magnificent peaks were never far from our view, and the clouds never did dump on us.

And whether the view was distant or close up, it was fascinating.

Anybody'd think Barb was either carrying the camera or "helping" me find things to take pictures of.

Dean and Bettye's Mountain Aire with their red Jeep, our rig, and then John's Winnebago Vectra.  We're in the Gros Ventre Campground inside Grand Teton NP.  All three of us tow Jeeps.  See that baldness on that hill?  Well, it's the result of one of the largest landslide in the world.

The landslide blocked the Gros Ventre River and created a lake, and eventually broke through and started flowing again.  This is right below the dam.  Dean and Barb are hiking up to a view point, but Dean is carrying the tripod along with the camera, so I suspect he may never actually make it to the view point.  Some wildflower will need documenting between here and there.  Gros Ventre is French for big belly.  When the first French fur trappers came into this area, they noticed the natives had the swollen stomachs brought about by mal-nutrition, thus the name.

There's the whole story in brief.  There's a book about the slide, how many people it killed, cabins and houses it took out, and the whole thing.  And then to make matters worse, more people were killed when the dam broke and let a bunch of water flow back down the river.

There's still a pretty good lake behind the dam.  Picture on the left is looking upriver, on the right I'm looking downriver to the dam.  Pretty impressive landslide, all told.

The break in the dam isn't very wide, and we crossed over the little bridge to take these shots.

There is a post by the side of the road, and an Osprey nest on top of the post.  Lots of Osprey in the area.  This one was working on its nest, and we stood there and watched for quite a while.

While the nest looks rather random to us, it sure gets built with a lot of precision.  Took lots of tries before the bird managed to get this stick right where it belonged.

We're off on an evening tour of the lake.  Our tour guide is Rowdy, who's retired from all kinds of things connected with the park system and this one in particular.  Not only was he good at telling us things about this area, he was great at just telling stories.  Turned out that he and Dean knew some of the same people in some town here in WY.

For some reason, both Barb and I enjoy the view from the water a bit more than just from a point of land.  Several streams feed this lake, most from melting snow and glaciers.

And FINALLY some elk!  As we were driving home, we noticed a car parked alongside the road, and that's a sure sign there's something worth seeing.  While the bull was pretty young, he was still a bull.  Great fun to see these big animals just doing their thing and not being bothered by us at all.

We could see Grand Teton Mountain from home pretty easily when the clouds weren't hiding it.  The next day Barb, Dean, and I decided to take the ride across the lake to hike up to see the falls.  And then if my knee could take it, further up the trail was Inspiration Point.  This is the landing that served as trail head.  And there were no restroom facilities anywhere near here, so you'd better have taken care of that at the boat landing on the other side of the lake!