The original plan for my birthday was to go to Grand Teton National Park, (GTNP). There we wanted to make our annual climb up Grand View Point. However, it started raining about the time we left our house. Maybe next time!
The drive up the Snake River Canyon was colored by red oaks and some yellow cottonwoods. The fall colors have arrived! As my cousin Donna once remarked, the color change here is nowhere as beautiful as the fall colors in Northern Iowa. Here we have so many dark green pine trees that never shed and stay green all winter.
Still the color is beautiful, especially when the Aspen groves turn bright yellow. Each grove of Aspen is a single individual and so all the trees turn at the same time. When that color change happens, it tells us it’s time for us to pack and head to our winter camp along the Coastal Bend of South Texas.
As we arrived at Moran we entered and stopped. There we changed drivers as I readied my camera. Renita had heard that several grizzly bears had been photographed on the way to Two Ocean Lake.
The road turned to gravel and the rain poured down! It continued the whole way but luckily the gravel road stayed passable, (we have a Suburu). As we neared the lake a long line of cars was returning. There must have been a bear jam, and we missed it.
Arriving at the lake we decided it was raining to hard for our planned hike of a part of the trail. Stopping for a bit, we viewed the fields with our binoculars, before turning around, (the road ends at the lake).
No bears, elk, or moose. If you photograph wildlife, you often must change your plans from one target species to another. We next stopped at the Oxbow area where the Snake River forms a lovely back water.
Nothing was happening so we continued north to Leeks Marina. The marina is closed as are all of the Parks boat ramps. The Bureau of Reclamation has dropped the lake’s waters to about ten percent of its full level. This dramatically changed the fishing, and many parts of the river were now so low that the fish became trapped in shallow
pools, (The local Trout Unlimited group rafted and kayaked catching and moving many of the fish to deeper pools.
Our next stop was at Jackson Dam. We saw that the Wildlife Management team had closed parts of the road, as a bear had been spotted. It turned out it was a sow grizzly and her cub. They crossed the road and entered the dense area called Willow Flats.
We never did see any bears, but we saw a group of people scanning the dense brush. Parking our car we joined them. Several pointed out a large bull moose and his harem of several cows. As he fed, he opened his mouth to taste the air for the pheromones of the cows, (we have even seen a bull stick his tongue to taste the air).
Sensing the cows still near him, he turned and stared at us on the hillside. Moose are the most dangerous animal in the forest, and they kill more people than bears. An enraged bull in the rut is about as dangerous as it gets, but it decided we were not a threat and he returned to his harem.
We never spotted the bears, but a pack of coyotes were mousing. One of the men near us announced that they were wolves and not coyotes and stated that he had shot hundreds of coyotes and knew the difference, (he was wrong, you can see the pointed ears of the coyotes, wolves’ ears are more rounded).
Deciding that it was time to head back home (about seventy miles), we got into a traffic jam entering Jackson. Luckily it didn’t last long. I was in a hurry as I knew Renita had baked a birthday cake. It’s my favorite, a pistachio cake with pistachio and whipped cream frosting!
The drive back was not fun as it was rush hour down the Sanke River Canyon, (most of the workers live outside Jackson as the price of housing is prohibitive). The narrow winding road has a speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour. There are only a few passing lanes and so by the time we arrived at Alpine we were in a pack of twenty-one cars and trucks.
It had been a fun day in the park with great views of moose, (we saw four). Clear skies
