Flowers and Friends and Mountains, A Picnic on The Greys River

Sometimes, most times really, it’s time to take a break and spend a day among mountain flowers, a day of exploring new places, a day in which every turn is filled with deer and beauty. So we decided to drive along the Grey’s River Road and see what we could see....

Renita and Jane packed our lunches and Dave and I our "always ready expert advice", and so we first drove the twenty miles to Alpine, Wyoming. Stopping and showing them our display we also made a stop at the grocery store and hardware before turning up Grey River Road.
About a mile, we entered the Bridger-Teton National Forest and were greeted with a good forest service display of the fifty two miles of road. It said that after that the road turned into a four wheel drive adventure, but today wasn't the day for that, we just wanted to explore.

Winding along the Grey, a beautiful looking trout stream, we were quickly passing fields of mountain flowers. Right now the dominant flower is a bright yellow flower called yellow arrow leaf and the mountains here are full of fields of the bright sunshine filled petals.
Further up the road we not only found numerous campgrounds but lots of large open spots to boon dock, which means to simply pull off and camp for free. Its something we love doing and we all quickly agreed that this is most definitely a place to spend some time.
Renita spotted two sand hill cranes, nesting alongside the stream and we all loved their bright breeding colors. They spring displays are beautiful, after seeing them in their dull drab grey while wintering along the Texas coast.
Next she spotted a deer and then another and she definitely had her eyes on as she pointed them out.

Finding a nice empty spot to picnic, Jane spread out a blanket and of course Renita saw movement in an alpine meadow. As we watched the deer grazing, it was Dave’s turn and he pointed out a family of geese parading along the river bank. Jane next spotted a hooded merganser swimming down river. I hadn't found anything, except a few rocks, maybe I should look up more often?

Trying a little panning, I didn't expect to find any gold but panning isn't just for gold but a way of finding what's in the area. It turned to be not much, but that's ok too and as we drove further I spotted several deer myself. Dave’s turn was next and he has some really goods eyes as he noticed two deer by spotting their large muley ears sticking out among the tree trunks.

We drove as far as Muffit Creek, before deciding to turn around. The road kept going and of course so did the mountains. See the Grey river is actually between two ranges, The Wyoming Range to the east and the Salt Range to the west. Of these two the  Salt Range is what we see from our place at Star Valley.
There are so many mountains here, mountains that I never new existed, and we have lived in Wyoming for thirty five years. High above us one could see ancient glacial valleys, where ice once filled cirques but now had all melted during the global warming at the end of the Pleistocene.

Our day of adventure was too soon over but it had been a beautiful day with flowers and friends and a mountain river, a day well spent. Clear skies.