A Drive through Grand Teton National Park, WY

Head north from Jackson Hole for about a half hour and you'll end up in Grand Teton National Park. And that's just what we did.

We've been in the Rocky Mountains for a couple of weeks now, but none of the hundreds of mountains we've seen look anything like the Tetons.

These rocky, jagged spires are much younger than many of the older, smoother peaks.

There are also numerous active glaciers, still shredding their way down the mountain, cutting rock and leaving moraines of debris across thousands of acres.

Kim and I have taken thousands of pictures so far (7,367 to date, actually), across 3 different cameras. We both have a keen interest in photography, so we've been swapping off -- sometimes, Kim is on the SLR with the zoom lens...

...while I'm on the panorama and wide angle digitals.

And of course, we trade off a bit later.

I've been on vacation all of this week, so we've been able to slow our pace some, and take in a bit more scenery. This is one of the lakes created by a glacial scree field.

But sometimes we both put the camera down and get a picture together. We tend to get the best results from a tripod, actually.

The panorama of the full Teton landscape is just spectacular.

And Giuseppe the Jeep has been puttering along quite well. We've popped into 4WD a couple of times now. I think I enjoy that far more than Kim :-)

Jackson Lake is in the National Park, and provides some incredible vistas of the Teton peaks in the distance.

Kim has wanted to stay in a "log cabin" for quite some time now. She finally got her wish at Colter Bay Village in Grand Teton National Park.

The ambiance was nice. Electricity, hot showers, but no TV or WiFi. The hot showers were a nice change after our previous three nights camping and rafting south of Jackson Hole. The temperature plummeted to 27F overnight, which is on the lower fringe of our 3-season tent and sleeping bags. Rather, our heated cabin was quite toasty!

In the cabin, we were just a steps away from Jackson Lake, and we took a nice stroll in the evening around sunset.

After our stroll, we attended a "ranger talk" on porcupines, which was informative, but a bit long. The ranger was a friendly, interesting person who's quite attached to porcupines, it seems.

We "checked out" on time at 11am, but we did mooch a good hour's worth of WiFi in the lounge, to post our last few entries and pictures.

We didn't waste too much time, though, as Yellowstone National Park -- the grandfather of them all -- awaited. Northward bound...

:-Dustin