Month: September 2015

Our first full day at Colter Bay.  We didn’t want to drive anywhere so it was a day nearby.  We walked along the lake around the point on the north side of the marina, maybe three miles.

But it is a very pleasant place.  The trail went out around the point in the distance and then across a narrow land bridge to another island.  All geared up for a hike.

Most of the trail follows near the lakeshore but though the woods.  Squirrels and chipmunks were everywhere.  They are about 1/2 the size of the ones we have in MN.  They seemed mostly to ignore people.  You could be only a couple feet from a squirrel digging up seeds and eating them as fast as it could and it would ignore you.  They probably were watching you all the time but you posed no threat. These little squirrels are about 5″ long.  Think how you would feel if some giant thing a hundred feet tall or so came lumbering up to you.  Scared?  Probably but then they see big giant things all the time.

The forest is a process in never ending change.  Trees die and fall over, new trees are growing. Small plants and grasses are everywhere.  The soil here is measured in inches over glacial moraines of gravel all rounded off over time.  When trees are uprooted they pull up what little dirt there is and leave it in odd piles making you wonder what was digging there.  When you can see the roots they are very shallow but spread out.

When a tree dies what remains of its stump becomes a food store for all the mosses, lichens, bacteria and everything else that you normally never see.

Except in the extraordinary colors and textures on the forest floor.

Some one followed us the whole way.

Each small side trail to the beach gave us a new look at the Teton Range.  The mountains come right down to Jackson Lake which is more than 400 ft deep.  It is about a mile across from here to the other side of the lake.  We are at about 6,800 ft here.  Grand Teton is over 11,000 ft high.

These are very young mountains in geological time. They were formed only millions of years ago when two plates broke apart. One land mass where we are now sank and the other where the nountains are was pushed upward. This is called a block fault uplift.  Sort of like if you had a brick sidewalks and one brick sank down and the adjacent brick was pushed up and there was a sharp face remaining.  At least three ice ages have occurred since and they have come north to south and west to east gouging  and scraping the mountains out of solid rock. Bulldozing the lakes and pushing up massive gravel moraines and then smothing out the valley.  Wind, snow, ice and water do the day to day work to get the mountains to there they are today.

There are several glaciers in these mountaint.  Much smaller today that in 1980 when we were here last  but still there.  You might think they are left over from the last ice age but they are very young  maybe only 300 years old or so made during a mini ice age.

And back around to where the boats were lined up with the mountains in the background as if they were a jigsaw puzzle waiting to happen.

Hard to get the inside and the outside but the 60 ft tall windows gave the main room quite a view.

Hard to describe this stye. Big lodge look? But outside the view was amazing.

Another stroll to the beach in the evening gave a different look.

Ducks in the water diving for whatever they were going for. Evening clouds from the west seem common lit up by the sun going down underneath them.

An evening stroll on the beach is rarely shared with more than 8 or 10 others on a half mile long “beach”. It is very quiet and peaceful.  Out here in the afternoon there are no more people, usually a bit more breeze and very warm mountain sun with air temps in the high 60’s and low 70’s.  A cold front is coming in the next few days, nighttime temps down into the low 30’s.  Not much change to daytime temps is forecast.

There is just so much here to see and absorb.  We are going down to Jackson to meet some folks and have breakfast in the next couple days.  Probably not much else there. 

So more to come, much more.  Maybe not in real time but I am trying to keep up or catch up or not get any further behind.  

Roger and Susan.

We packed up in the morning at Gros Ventre after a nice breakfast and a short walk.  We didn’t have much to do really. For only one night we really didn’t unpack anything.  Inside stuff is usually where it needs to be whether we are moving or not.  We had no water hooked up, We rarely do unless we are adding water to our onboard tanks.  We had no sewer connection. We never do unless we are emptying waste tanks.  With a full water tank and empty waste tanks we gan go for 7-10 days. When we travel we start with empty waste tanks and only 25% or so water. Same with fuel, we try to run between 1/3 and 2/3 full, about 700 miles worth.

We took the more eastern road, it was more direct with fewer turn offs up to the Moran Junction and then west towards Jackson Lake. It followed up along the lake past the Jackson Lake Lodge to the Colter Bay Junction. 

Every turn revealed more of the Tetons.

We turned in the Colter Bay road,. It was about a mile to Jackson Lake and the entrance to the campground.

Normally there is a line of RVs waiting to check in.  When we got there there were none.

Check in was quick and then down into the campground to H66,

This is by far the nicest of the National Park RV campgrounds we have stayed in or driven through.  Big roomy sites, most all pull throughs, lots of tall lodgepole pines and shade.  Very quiet and calm.  Maybe 100 yards to Jackson Lake.

Colter Bay is towards the northern end of the Grand Teton National Park. It has a large campground (360 sites) about 10% of which have electric hook ups (very rare in National Parks). It is like many campgrounds in the National Parks, first come, first served.  Same with the electrical sites.  If they are available when you show up you can get one and once you have one you can stay for 14 days.  The other campground at Colter Bay is more like an RV park (160 sites) no tents, electric, water and waste connections. And they are reservable.  For many people, including us, the reservable part is worth a lot.  In this case they are $15/night more than the non-reservable sites in the other campground that only have electricity. 

There are also 160 cabins here for rent. They range from very tiny with a single double bed and a detached bathroom that you share with four other cabins (about $100) to a big double cabin, two bedrooms, one bath with four double beds for about $300. No kitchen facilities.

And there are tent cabins you can rent for about $95. These are a tent on a concrete pad with a canvas covered outside area with a fire ring.  Inside there are four single bunk beds with a mattress and a wood burning stove.  Bring your own sleeping bag and pretty much everything else you want or need.  Bathrooms and showers and a small store were nearby.

And there was a horse corral for all the cowboy wanabes.  A one hour ride was almost $50.  They had longer rides, breakfast rides, chuck wagon dinner rides.  Just about anything your never-before-in-a-saddle butt could stand.

And there was a fairly big marina.  Jackson Lake is quite large (a reservoir) many miles long and more than a mile across in some place.  So there were some very large boats, cabin cruiser types to go with the show homes and private jets, sailboats, speed boats, lots of boats.  And canoes and kayaks for rent and small 10HP powered boats (even more than a horse ride) and a scenic cruise boat for a ride around this part of the lake. 

Mount Moran straight ahead and,in the distance, to the left and much higher, Grand Teton.

What else.  Oh there was a laundry and a shower building ($4.25 for the shower) and a grocery store and a gift shop, of course, with a few interesting things and some more bathrooms.  There is a smallish parking lot for all of this and it was rarely full or even close to full.

There is a Visitor’s Center with an auditorium and a gallery of native art that changed from one artisit to another each week. And another gift shop. There has to be those,  where else would one get a patch from every place we go that has one for sale?

And all of this is closing piece by piece while we are here.  By the end of the month Colter Bay will be essentially closed for the season.

We are taking lots of pictures.  I am trying to keep the blog close to current.  Trying is the operative word.  We are busy, go to bed early and sleep a long time.  

So more to come,

Roger and Susan

We left Idaho Falls by nine in the A of M.  We were one day ahead of our scheduled arrival at Colter Bay which is about 45 miles north of Jackson, WY.  Gros Ventre campground is the first campground into the park, about 8 miles from Jackson.  RV accomodations like everything in Jackson are beyond comprehension expensive.  Gros Ventre (it is the name of a Native American tribe in this area, pronounced Grow Vaan) campgound is first come first served and usually had space at noon. That was our target.

The highway from Idaho Falls across towards Jackson followed the Snake River and by the large Palisades reservoir.  I was expecting more of a challenging drive but it was good roads, not big grades up or down and very little traffic.  

The pictures with the dates are from our dash cam.  Pretty good I think. It takes a continuous high definition movie as we drive along along with recording real time speed, direction, GPS coordinates and three axis accelerations.  When we play them back we see what the camera saw and we can follow our progress on Google maps.  These fill up a 32GB memory card in six hours and then start overwriting the oldest files.  They are easy to save the files and get stills from the video.

We drove into Jackson.  We were here in 1980.  This is not the Jackson we remember.  

Ranting rises up …

It is now just like every other tourist mecca.  Sort of like a Cowboy Las Vegas. No grocery stores, no Target, no Walmart, some over priced gas stations, dozens of tourist related merchantile stores, many very expensive art galleries, many over priced, under quality food venues, extraordinarily pricey RV resorts, hotels, motels, lodges, (35 for a town of 9,000) condos, ski wear, cowboy wear and people comically over dressed to impress the art dealers.  Another out west town gone to retail tourist trade and the over-the-top trade to the ultra rich.  I guess there really isn’t much left out here other than that so milk it while you can.  And then there are the multi-million dollar show homes where the dozens of private jets at the local airport have brought the art gallery shoppers for their annual one week visit.  Susan says I am being a bit overdramatic.  Indeed!  In this small once ranch town the median home price is $749,000. Where do all of the ranch hands live?  Can they?

John D Rockefeller brought his family to the Jackson Hole (Hole = Valley) area to see the Teton Range in 1926.  He was so shocked by the gaudy tourist trade, the prostitutes, the bars, the gambling casinos and all that had settled in the area that he set out to buy everything in the valley that he could.  Over time he bought up more than 35,000 acres.  When the park was established in 1929 it only included the mountains themselves and the glacial lakes at their base to the east. Rockefeller tried to donate all that he had purchased to the park but it took until 1943 for President Roosevelt to accept the donation by making it a National Monument thus sidestepping a congress unwilling to do anything. It took until 1950 for the original National Park and the National Monument to be merged into the Grand Teton National Park as it is today.  There are still small ranches and private holdings within the Park boundaries.  Some of these are private homes, some are operated as Dude Ranches.  Wouldn’t Jeff Bridges be proud.

So somewhere along the way a robber barron did right by us all.  We should be thankful for everyone’s efforts to protect areas like this.  It is just stunningly beautiful.  Away from what happens in Jackson it becomes a place to enjoy what is here.  In Some places there are more people trying to enjoy it than others but find that spot only a few hundred yards from everyone else and you can be alone in the quiet beauty and amazing mountains so close.

Ranting subsides …

The town square is still there with the elk antler arches.

Now, this is like many old western towns.  The center of town, where people meet and gather.  This one had a fence all around to keep people out except through the gates and along the diagonal sidewalks and a small place to sit in the middle. We are pretty sure there were no other benches.  It was a photo opportunity. We compared it to the vibrant and full of life Plaza in Santa Fe. There is no camparison.  

We drove our coach right through town.  The picture above from the dash cam was while we were turning the corner.  Another mile of gaudy commercialism (well, there I go again) to the park boundary past the edge of the National Elk Refuge and our first views of the Teton Range and another three miles to the turn to Gros Ventre Campground.

Check in at Gros Ventre was easy.

A nice campsite.

Color is starting in the Park.

And over the glacial moraines that formed the sides of the Gros Ventre River valley, the Tetons poked up. 

The next morning, Thursday, 9/3 we move to Coulter Bay.  Internet service here is slow but I hope to show in pictures what we will see as much as words.

More to come,

Roger and Susan

We left the Oregon coast on Sunday.  18 days went by way too fast, next time at least a month.  It rained on and off most of Saturday so we got the out door tasks done. Good thing,  it rained steady all night Saturday.  By Sunday morning it had stopped, we did the last few things we needed to do and were on the road by shortly after nine.

Before you get to the mountains it is pretty flat, few trees, sort of like lots of places out west, dry and covered with sagebrush.

TX, AZ, NM? Hard to tell.

And then the west slope of the central mountains, big trees, lots of trees.  And it rained most of the way up.  They really need rain.  It is very dry.

Normally this river (South Yamhill) would fill the picture side to side.

Everything that is brown here would normally be under water.

Water levels at this dam are about 50′ low.

Cloudy, misty, rain.  Steep climbs, slow turns, traffic not too bad.  The coach did just fine on both the uphill and down hill parts.

Susan’s favorite part, nothing but nothing on the right.

And then over the pass, down hill, much drier, very few trees and grassland.

Sisters, OR looked interesting but very much manufactured for the tourist trade.  It reminded us of Durango, CO. We went on to Bend and stayed at Camp Walmart.

From Bend going east towards Ontario there is another 4,800 ft pass. And then a long downhill winding path towards Ontario.  All of this is two lane, 55 mph. Good road, not much traffic.

As you get towards Ontario the land gets very flat, mainly because they graded it that way for flood irrigation.  Many years ago they grew a lot of grass seed out this way. Now it is the onion capital of the world, or so they claim.  Over 1 billion pounds of onions from this area every year.  Irrigation canals, pipe lines and equipment everywhere.  Even the John Deere dealer had equipment that was quite odd, specialized for the onion growers.

The dirt looks like light, gray plowed up mud.  It is hard to imagine anything would grow in it but with enough water onions must.

We stopped just past Ontario in an old RV park full of museum aged rvs.  It is OK.  Lots of folks just living here in old RVs that will likely never move again. Doing some laundry this AM.  

A shorter drive to Idaho Falls today and then over another pass into the Tetons on Wednesday morning. 

More later,

Roger and Susan

While we were at the coast we had a chance to meet some folks from the Foretravel Forum.  It is always fun to do, we sort of know them from the Forum but getting to actually meet someone is great.