Hello all....

We decided that we would hike Taggart Lake Trail, but as is common, on the way to Taggart Lake, there was a traffic jam. We found out it was a grizzly bear that had everyone’s attention. We stopped and watched for a while and took lots of pictures. This grizzly bear happened to be tagged so we knew she was #399 and that she had just kicked her 3 cubs out and was looking for a mate. The cubs were about 2 years old. We didn’t see them, but saw pictures of them later and they were almost as big as she was.

A few miles down the road at the entrance to Jackson Lake Lodge we saw people looking at something so we stopped again. It was the cow moose and her calf that we had seen earlier in the week. We took more pictures and then moved on to Taggart Lake.

Finally, we made it to the trailhead. The hike to Taggart Lake was about 4 miles and took us about 3-4 hours because we like to stop a lot and take pictures. It was another beautiful hike through wildflower meadows, aspen groves, lodgepole pine forests and along a beautiful mountain stream.

LOOK CLOSE FOR MARY AND JEANIE...way down the trail!
It's a long climb to the top of Grand Teton!



Taggart Lake is another pristine mountain lake and the hike was moderately easy. The day was beautiful and the view of the lake was great. Some people were fishing, but we didn’t see them catch anything. The lake was crystal clear.

We headed back to the camper because we were so tired. Bilgem you will be glad to know we enjoyed the salmon from Seattle and we cooked up some great Salmon patties. Mary will give you the recipe when she gets home.

We were very tired so didn’t go out wildlife viewing.

The next day we decided to drive to Jackson, Wyoming, which is a small western town but in the summer months has quite an influx of tourists. We toured and shopped in the historic downtown district and then rode the ski lift at Snow King which is a winter ski area in Jackson. We had a great view of the Tetons, but there was a haze over the mountains because of some fires in Sacramento, California so we weren’t able to get any real good pictures of the mountains.

We drove back through Teton Village which is another ski area and entered the park through the Granite Canyon Entrance Station. This is a more remote area of the park and has just been developed. Lawrance Rockefeller donated his land as a wildlife preserve and they had just opened this part of the park this summer. The visitor center was closed as we came through and we will come back tomorrow to hike Phelps Lake Trail.

On the way back to our campground we drove to Oxbow Bend to do some wildlife viewing and once again, we saw a large crowd and knew something good was up the road. It was a large grizzly bear. We found out that it was one of #399 cubs. David got lots of good pictures as you can see. After that we saw another moose and a herd of elk. It was a good night for wildlife viewing.

We woke up Friday morning to a beautiful clear morning and the smoke was gone from the fires in California. We had to get Mary to the airport by noon so we got ready in a hurry to go take more pictures since the sky was so beautiful.

After dropping Mary off at the airport, we headed towards the Lawrance Rockefeller wildlife preserve and the hike to Phelps Lake.

This was probably the best hike we have taken. There were not that many people on the trail and the trail wound through sagebrush meadows, fir, spruce, and lodgepole pine forests, and beautiful aspens groves. There was also an area that looked very much swamp like. We followed a beautiful stream to the lake. Phelps Lake is a beautiful bluish green mountain lake. Probably the prettiest we have hiked to. This area was the Rockefellers private ranch for years and he wanted to share it with the public.

To quote Rockefeller "This land was given to the American People to help us connect with nature and enrich our lives—it is ours to cherish and protect". He wanted to inspire the public to become better stewards of the land and hoped to do this by creating this preserve.

We wanted to share two quotes we saw at the Lawrance Rockefeller Visitor Center.

MORE PIC'S


JACKSON LAKE (short walk from our campsite)


GRAND TETON


CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION




BISON ON THE RANGE


MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN THE US....JUST HAD TO DO IT!


ENJOYING GOD'S AWESOME BEAUTY


REFLECTIONS


OK, WE ARE OFF INTO THE SUNSET......TILL THE NEXT TIME.

God Bless…