Grand Tetons Flashback - Jackson Sights

Last night when I left work at 7:30 the wind was roaring and the temperature readout on my dashboard read -2 degrees.  I don't even want to know what the wind chill was, and for some reason I wore a skirt to work!  I know it's colder everywhere this past week across our country, but holy moly, enough's enough already.  Thirty degrees below normal for four out of the last six days is a little insane and it's been snowing and blowing too.

Now, to be fair, it's been even colder this past week in Jackson, Wyoming.   Luckily when we visited Jackson on our big fall trip in September 2009 the weather was beautiful.  Not familiar with Jackson and the Grand Tetons area?  Here's a  map before I knock your socks off with my photos.



Ready? Hang onto your socks!

When we left Yellowstone and drove to the Tetons the mountains took my breath away.  The picture above was just shot on the fly from the side of the road in the middle of the day.  I don't think it's possible to get a bad shot in The Tetons.

The Tetons are interesting in that they are a younger fault block mountain range.  I think it looks pretty good for being 9 million years old myself.  They are still rising, averaging 1 foot every 100-400 years.

When I took that shot we were on our way to Jackson to get some groceries and make a stop at the National Wildlife Art Museum.  I'm not the biggest fan of paintings so the stuff on the inside wasn't as cool to me as the massive sculptures outside.  Those I could have looked at every day.  Some day I'll go back and photograph them in better light.

As we were leaving the museum I noticed a forest fire across the valley.  Just a small one, nothing like what seems to be happening across the west the last couple of years so it was probably a planned burn.  The smoke made for an interesting shot.

Jackson Hole contains more mudslides and landslides than almost any other part of the Rocky Mountain Region.  All that dynamic energy in the earth makes for a beautiful landscape.  Just outside of the downtown area is this gorgeous view.  The arches made up of antlers that other people stop to take pictures of are neat, but I'll take Mother Nature's ever changing canvas over man's creations any day!

We were only in the Tetons for a few days, the shortest part of our trip, but we still packed a lot of adventure into a short amount of time. More posts on our Wyoming leg of the big 2009 trip throughout the winter!