Miles Driven Today: 100 Total Miles Driven: 3539
We were up and at ’em, ready to move on to Grand Teton National Park. Said our farewells to Old Faithful and we were on the road for 9. I should mention that the full moon last night was awesome and I took a couple of pictures from our cabin. We really liked the Old Faithful area and would recommend it.
The weather today is back to hot sun. It got up to 26C although last night it was about 2C, and our car was a bit frozen first thing. So lovely to feel the heat again though and see the mountains against the blue sky. We were back in thin t shirts and shorts.
The road south out of Yellowstone was really scenic with some great overlooks and stops alongside creeks, waterfalls and rivers. Very heavily forested.
We approached Grand Teton, which is like a little, long, narrow tail on the south end of Yellowstone. Words cannot describe how stunning it is! A chain of lakes, surrounded by forests with this incredible backbone of huge snow-capped mountains running as a backdrop on the western side. The mountains perfectly reflect in the water. It’s so picture perfect, and the mountains are so amazing, so stunning, that you feel as though you are driving towards huge cardboard cutouts, or models: they just can’t be real!!! We had a picnic lunch at one of the overlooks, munching our sandwiches, just spellbound. It certainly is the most picture perfect view we’ve seen so far. I can see that it’s going to be a repeat of the photo frenzy of Many Glacier Lake. I shall take millions of photos. Apologies in advance!
We drove past Jackson Lake, the largest lake, and parked up at Jenny Lake. Had a look in the visitor centre and picked up some info. Then we had about a 2.25 mile hike around the lake edge. A nice little trail through the forest along the lake shore. Just outstandingly beautiful. I can see we are going to have a fabulous 5 days here.
About 3 we drove back to our resort, Signal Mountain Lodge, on Jackson Lake. WOWOWW. What a lovely place! A small lodge surrounded by cabins of different types on the wooded shoreline. With of course, that fabulous mountain/lake view right in front. Our cabin is one of the most basic but still fantastic. Very wooden and rustic in appearance, set in the trees, but very comfortable. We have a queen and a single bed and a BATHROOM! So nice to have that again. No fridge or coffee machine as usual but the cabins do have absolutely fantastic WIFI!!! Hooray for that! This lodge is run by Forever Resorts, not horrid Xanterra and they really could teach them a lot of lessons about how to run National Park lodgings. What a world of difference. Anyway, I have gone back and uploaded all the missing photos from our Yellowstone days to the blog posts. That was just impossible in the Xanterra resorts.
We wandered down to the lakeshore and looked at the boat rental. Might do that tomorrow but after that we think they are closing. Tomorrow morning though we are on a raft floating down the Snake River for early morning wildlife viewing. Stay tuned.
Had dinner in the cheaper of the two dining options, and sat out on the terrace overlooking lake Jackson. It was still so warm we were in sleeveless tops. Had gorgeous burgers. The sunset was spectacular and I took too many pictures no doubt.
So far we are soooo impressed with Grand Teton NP. Stunning isn’t enough praise!