Early May 2021

5/17/2021

This summer we’ll be working in Grand Teton National Park, at a small bookstore near Jenny Lake. The bookstore is located in an old artist’s cabin being used as a visitor’s center/bookstore.

We arrived May 6^th and settled ourselves in Gros Ventre campground. The 7^th we took a drive into the park to check out where we will be working. We couldn’t get inside since the store wasn’t open yet, but this is the view we will have just outside the front door of the building.

Then we took a short hike around the area near the boat dock.

We then drove to the north end of the park. There was a small herd of doe elk along the way.

Farther north we found Jackson lake calm but still partially frozen.

Saturday the 8^th we drove to a small community, a mile and a half east of the campground, called Kelly. In a field just north of the town we saw a much larger herd of elk.

After a day of training on the 11^th, we drove through a couple of loops in the campground, to see if there were any interesting sights and we came across this young moose.

As we were leaving the park the afternoon of the 13^th, we noticed a mama elk on the bank of the snake river, just outside the park gate. She had her baby so well hidden we couldn’t get a decent photo of it.

On Saturday the 15^th we drove up to the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. To get there we drove up to the Canyon area, through the Hayden Valley, without seeing more than a couple of animals. Yellowstone Lake was still frozen, but the ice was starting to break up.

We also noticed that the river levels were considerably lower than we had seen in previous years. Hopefully this won’t mean a bad fire season.

Between Hellroaring and Tower Junction we finally saw a herd of bison with some of Penny’s favorite sights – baby bison.

On the way home we noticed some interesting cloud formations around the Tetons.

After dinner we looked out our back window and saw this mother and young moose, no more than 30 feet away from the trailer.

The little one seemed to have an itch though.