Category Highway 191

Jenny Lake

Tell anyone that you are going to the Grand Tetons, and they are likely to tell you to go to Jenny Lake. It's the Old Faithful of the Grand Tetons: Everyone goes there and it is, as a result, a logistics disaster. Parking is a fiasco. Points of trails are so narrow and hazardous that one has to wait for a stream of hikers to pass before traveling in the opposite direction. The wear and tear of these visitors has lead to one of the major allures of the lake trail, Hidden Falls, to be closed for reclamation.

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Dawn Shoot

I couldn't sleep last night. I was too hot.  I was too cold. My shoulder hurt.  My other shoulder hurt. By 4:30 AM I had pretty much given up. That, and my driver woke up.  We looked at each other.  "You want to get some pictures?" I nodded.

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Old Faithful

Everyone comes to Yellowstone National Park to see Old Faithful. Maybe it is the 106 to 185 foot tall plumes of boiling water shot into the air. It could be the 3,700 to 8,400 gallons of scalding liquid dispelled in each eruption. Perhaps it is the grand predictability of the eruptions—averaging every 90 minutes. Or maybe everyone has just said "this is where you go" and so thousands of people from around the world crowd a boardwalk around a hole in the ground every 90 minutes and then file away for the next frothing earthly phenomena.

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Day 2

Waking up in Grand Teton National Park feels like an accomplishment. After desperately charging through Yellowstone so that we could get a campsite before they were all taken (there were only 6 out of 320 remaining) we were ready to take it easy. Friends would be joining us in the afternoon and, with limited cell service, we didn't want to get too wrapped up in the wild nooks and crannies of the park and miss a call. So we scoped out the park.

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Night Shoot

I photographed the Milky Way! For a slight pedantic digression: we are in the Milky Way. So, in a way, every photograph that we take that is not done by astronomers, is pretty much guaranteed to be of the Milky Way. All the same, this is a view of the rest of the Milky Way as captured within the constraints of a single camera on Earth. It does not compare to some of the amazing photographs I've seen online. The moon was still out and overwhelms the more distant stars. But it is amazing, and I can go to sleep, happy.

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Day 1

I feel like some Judie Bloom high schooler when I write that today was the best day ever. But it was really awesome. After a couple days of travel, we rolled through Yellowstone to our campsite in the Grand Tetons. In the course of the day, we saw a bald eagle, buffalo, elk, and moose. The only thing left on our Yellowstone bingo card is "bear." My preference would be a black bear, but I wouldn't want to be considered "picky." There certainly is an unhinged part of me that wants to see a grizzly bear in the wild.

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Arches

Arches National Park vista

We wing things. That's what we do. I've made a map of places we would like to go to and then base our routes on our final destination and what mapped points fall between our current location and destination. Exactly how our trip plays out each time is something we play by ear. In this case, we had ten days to travel to Oregon. Half way in, we discovered that we would be swinging by Arches National Park. Arches ranks as one of the most exciting National Parks that neither of us has ever visited. So, of course, we went.

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