XC_text_4_Teton.doc

XC_text_4_Teton.doc
Tue 25-Sep-07 West Yellowstone. MT

Sunday was a gloomy forecast and we wanted to stop in Salt Lake City
which was only a couple hundred miles, so we slept a bit late and proceeded
leisurely. Turned out to be a pretty nice day, another nice drive on US89
most of the way, only got on I15 when approaching SLC.

We met up with family friend and Brettl-Hupfer Ben Rainville,
had dinner with him,his mom, and girlfriend Christy
who’s a specialist in mountain meteorology (i.e. weather).

Then it was dark and really raining so we only went a little further,
and checked into the first motel we found in Ogden, UT

Forecast for Monday Sept 24 was for lots of rain,
but actually we only encountered intermittent rain.
When we looked out at the mountains
behind our motel we saw snow on the mountain tops.

Took US89 all the way up (avoiding the I15).
This was another really beautiful ride!

Actually drove through a light snowfall in one of the passes.
The road goes through Snake River Canyon
with lots of turnoffs, picnic stops, rest areas, etc.
Passed through Jackson, WY(near Jackson Hole ski resort)
expecting to find a motel in thenext town or two,
but that put us inside Grand Teton National Park
so we stayed at a park lodge facility which was a really neat log cabin deal.
Tuesday (today) we took a naturalist-guided hike up to Inspiration Point,
which started with a shuttle boat ride across Jenny Lake;
real hat-and-gloves weather, no more top down cruising weather.
Continued on into Cascade Canyon a little.
(Dan would not take a picture of the snow along the canyon trail
so we have no proof of hiking in the snow.)
Partially storm cloudy with sunny breakthroughs,
making for really spectacular scenes.
Lots of snow up in the mountains.
They have about half a dozen active glaciers within Grand Teton National Park.

After Teton, we continued up US89 which segues directly into the south
entrance to Yellowstone National Park. In-park lodging was outside our
budget so we drove through (85 miles) and out the West entrance into the town of
West Yellowstone, Montana, where we found a nice family-run motel
and signed in for three nights. Weather is now pretty nice,
should be OK tomorrow and warm and sunny all day Thursday
so we should have a real nice two days in Yellowstone.