Grand Teton and Yellowstone - Wyoming!

The second road trip of the year we headed to northern Wyoming to visit the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.  We stayed in Colter Bay, a village in the Grand Tetons, renting a rustic cabin for 4 nights.  This was the home base for our adventures of exploration in the parks. We had a bit of weather the first two days, after all it is Wyoming and you always have to be prepared for anything.  It was quite cold, around the lower 40s in the day time , cloudy and rainy.  We bring our 'Wyoming Bag' on every road trip (gloves, beanies, and 32 degree jackets). This is not great weather for photography, but we pushed through. We brought the IR converted Lumix cameras just for fun. We did some cool stuff in infrared in the Badlands two weeks ago and wanted to keep the trend going.  

Camera: FujiFilm XT5, Lumix LX 100, iPhone 

Grand Tetons in Infrared 

We started the trip in Cody, Wyoming over the weekend intending to avoid the weekenders in the parks.  We strolled the downtown area and had dinner at Cassy's Steak House, Erich had a burger and I had fish tacos.  It was walking distance from the hotel.  We went no frills in Codey and stayed at the Hampton Inn, our road trip go to.  

The Old Trail Town is a museum located on the outskirts of Cody.  What a cool place! It is a fake ghost town that was built by re-locating several cabins from around Wyoming...specifically around the towns of Greybull and Meeteetse. Many of the buildings were taken completely apart, moved to the new site and reassembled. The Old Trail Town collection now consists of 26 buildings, which date from 1879 to 1901, one hundred horse drawn vehicles, an extensive collection of memorabilia from the Wyoming frontier and authentic Indian artifacts. There was a small cemetery which consisted of a few graves of relocated remains. Jeremiah Johnson was one of the people relocated. The carriage house was really cool too. Typically I can take them or leave them, the carriages, I am just not that interested in them.  Probably because they all look like th ones that were lined up in the middle of town.  But the ones in the carriage house were really cool and different than what I typically see. 

After the visit to the Old Trail Town we hit the Buffalo Bill Center - huge museum! We checked out the western art gallery and the many rooms filled with Buffalo Bill memorabilia.  There was a gigantic gun display!  Guns and guns and more guns, so many rows that we actually got a bit lost in the rooms.  

We had some extra time to kill in Cody so we drove to Montana to check out Big Horn Canyon.  We had a picnic lunch, checked out Devil's Canyon Overlook and then found a dirt road that led out of the park into the hills.  Great little side trip!  Back in Cody we had dinner at Bubba's BBQ, not the best, we have had better.  

We stayed in a cabin in Colter Bay within the Grand Teton National Park.  Pretty rustic and quiet.  No TVs, we just played UNO every night. We were close to the amenities and could walk to Jackson Lake for spectacular views of the range. The first day we had weather but on day 3 we were blessed with sunshine and blue skies. 

Exploring the Tetons on the way to Jenny Lake we stopped briefly at a pull out to capture an amazing view of the mountains with wild flowers.  There was a Chinese family shooting the scene as we were, when we realized we were doing the same shots, all crouched down to get the flowers in the foreground we all started giggling! 

We hit Oxbow Bend, Schabachelers Landing and found an off-road trail through the sagebrush. 

We actually drove all of Yellowstone, it was a lot of driving.  People would just stop in the middle of the road when they saw wildlife.  There were a lot of people at the popular spots.  We wanted to see the geysers and interesting rock formations.  We saw the bison, a mama bear and her cub and another brown bear, pelicans, deer and elk..sadly no moose. We had bad weather days and also a sunny day.  No night photography or long exposure shoots on this trip.  Trying to set up a tripod at some of the spots will all the people trying to take photos would have been impossible. 

On our final day we took a scenic raft ride on the Snake River from Jackson with Dave Hansen rafting. We wanted a leisurely end to the trip and felt white water rafting was more effort than we wanted.  After the raft trip we mentioned to each other that we could have done whitewater after all.  No worries we live in Colorado and can raft anytime. It was still a great little river trip. There were overcast skies, but we got to see several Bald Eagles, pelicans, mergansers and osprey.