Grand Teton National Park

 Tuesday August 24th - We drove from Yellowstone to the Tetons (1hr 45 min, 76 miles).  We stopped at Jenny Lake, on the way to our Tetons campground, since the girls had given Kevin a Kayak rental for his birthday.  The parking lot was very crowded, so we expected a wait for a kayak, but looks like you can do lots of hikes around Jenny Lake, so it wasn't all that crowded at the kayak rental.  We rented a tandem kayak for an hour and paddled across the lake and then came back along the shore.  Was a beautiful paddle beneath the Teton peaks.  We did a short bike ride from the Jenny Lake parking lot, there are really nice asphalt bike trails throughout the park.  Then we headed to our campground, Gros Ventre.  It is just south of Moose, and is quite convenient to Jackson and to most places in the park.  The sites are nicely spaced out and our campsite looks out toward the river.  The road to the campground seems to be a popular spot for moose sightings.  We saw a Mom and her calf one time and a bull moose the next time.

Campsite at Gros Ventre Campground

Birthday Boy...thank goodness he's no longer in his 50's

Wednesday August 25th - We had a lazy morning at the campground, then drove to Mormon Row,which was a community of Mormon homesteaders in the 1890s.  These Mormons had set off from Salt Lake City looking for areas to establish new communities to support their growing population.   We walked around a bit, and had lunch in the parking lot, with a beautiful view of the mountains.  In the afternoon we drove our bikes part way to Jackson and rode on the bike trail into Jackson.  We walked around a bit and bought baseball hats and a t-shirt for Kev...happy birthday!

Iconic T.A. Moulton Barn on Mormon Row

We were lucky, today wasn't very "smoky"

Snake River in front of the mountains

Bike trail to Jackson

There are 4 arches made of elk antlers at each corner of the Jackson town square

The sidewalks in downtown Jackson are all made of wooden planks.  

We rode our bikes to the field next to the entrance to our campground and watched the sunset over the mountains.

Thursday, August 26th - We rode our bikes from the campground to Mormon Row, was only 4 miles away, on a bumpy dirt road, it was a nice quiet ride.  We walked around the other part of Mormon Row, (a few more houses and barns) and then headed up Antelope Flats Rd.  We thought we could take another dirt road that would cut back to Mormon Row, but found after riding 1-2 miles down the bumpy road that it dead ended into a stream.  We had to turn around and ride back up it (uphill) to Antelope Flats.  This was a paved road and not very busy, but was more miles than we had anticipated for the ride.  We road through the town of Kelly and found a small shop that had wonderful root beer floats that we ate on the porch, with of course another beautiful view.  Today was much smokier than the last few days, and a bit cloudy, but still pretty.  Then we went into Jackson for some WiFi, and drove to Jackson Hole (about 15 min from Jackson).  There wasn't much to see there, but there is another nice bike trail between the two.

The road to nowhere!