When you live this close, you just have to go see the Tetons!

We are really enjoying our stay at Falls Campground in Wyoming. We're well over 8,000 feet in elevation, and it is wonderfully cool here this summer. But the best part of this forest service campground is the 50-amp electricity at our site. This gives us the ability to wander all day, without worrying about running our generator to recharge our house batteries. Given that freedom, and our proximity to Grand Teton National Park, we just had to go see the Tetons!

We wanted to be there early to beat the heat and the crowds, so we set the alarm for 5:00 a.m., and we were out the door by 5:30. The clouds were turning a nice pink color as the sun was rising this morning.

As we neared the national park entrance, we saw a herd of bison, with these two especially close to the highway. That was another reason to come early, as we were in hopes of seeing some wildlife this morning.

Our strategy worked pretty well, as we also saw four elk, two eagles, one pronghorn, and these three moose on our way into the national park. We hope this is just the beginning of the wildlife we will see today in the Tetons!

We had seen all of those animals by the time the sun was peeking over the peaks.

We are glad to report that there was no line to get into Grand Teton National Park when we arrived, and there was plenty of room in the trail head parking lot.  We had read about some smaller parking areas that fill up very early. We were on the trail by 7:00 a.m., with our jackets and gloves on because it was 42 degrees outside!

The skies are a little hazy this morning, but we can see the Tetons peeking out from the trees. The first part of the trail gains elevation quickly, so it wasn't long before we were warmed up and shedding our jackets.

We are on a loop trail today, and the first destination is Bradley Lake. We have the entire lake to ourselves this early morning.

So of course, we took way too many pictures. One thing we are noticing today, is how good the trees look here in the national park. After seeing forests near our campground where over 50% of the trees are dead, it's great to see healthy trees!

The water in Bradley Lake is absolutely clear, and we can see the rocks under the water perfectly.

We continued around the lake, and every new angle was more beautiful than the last. We are wandering in God's wonders today!

After we pulled ourselves away from Bradley Lake, we headed back into the trees to continue our hike.

That's when Denisa discovered "them."

It's the first huckleberry sightings of the year! This just turned into a very tasty--and much slower--hike!

We're beginning to see a few people on the trail, so when Mark saw a overgrown spur trail leading towards the mountains, we took it. Even though we could sometimes tell we were on a trail, it often felt like we were bush-whacking through the woods.

Mark heard some very interesting slapping noises in the water, so we headed through the woods to the water's edge. He's still thinking it was a big grizzly slapping trout out of the lake, but we didn't see any bear this trip.

We returned via our narrow trail to the well-worn main trail to get to our second lake of the day--Taggart Lake.

It was almost as pretty as Bradley Lake! But by the time we got here, we had to share the view with many more hikers.

It's just as clear as the other lake, as we can see the fallen trees under the water. That was our last picture of the lake. As we progressed to the side of the lake closest to the trailhead, it was impossible to take a picture without lots of other hikers in it.

We took a longer, lonelier route back to the pickup just to avoid the crowds starting on the trail now. We read that most people visit the national parks between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., and we are definitely past 10 a.m. now. 

We had hoped for lots of wildlife sightings on this early morning hike, but the only "wildlife" picture we got was of this wild butterfly.

We finished our 7.3-mile hike at 11:00. As we got closer to the pickup, we met a constant stream of people entering at the trail head. 

We're also seeing that the parking lot is full, and cars are parked along the road in every direction. Welcome to the national park crowds of summer 2021 that we've been reading about.

Besides a few huckleberries, we haven't had much to eat since our very early breakfast. So we were one of the first people in line for pizza at Dornan's Cafe that opened up at 11:30. After eating an entire pizza, we need a nap. Our early morning wake-up call is beginning to catch up with us. But it's 73 degrees outside and it feels warmer than that. Where is there a nice cool place for a nap? We've joked about the number of times we've fallen asleep while watching national park films. So today we headed to the visitor center for a nice dark and cool auditorium. We were sad to hear that they are having AV problems with the national park film, but we found the empty auditorium still made a good place for a cool 20-minute snooze.

Now that we are rested, we were ready to explore more of the park. We made the drive to Gros Ventre campground, because this was the place that we found moose the last time we visited. Even though we were pretty thorough in our search, we were disappointed that no moose were camping out in the heat of the day. So we headed on down the park road until we got to String Lake. The last time we visited Grand Teton National Park was in late September 2017, and we didn't realize that so many people swim and boat here in the summer. It was crowded, and we circled the three parking lots many times before Mark managed to fit our pickup (with bikes on the back) into a tiny parallel parking spot.

But we found that if we walked a little down the trail towards Leigh Lake, we could get away from the crowds and once again had the lake views to ourselves. We are now on the north side of the Teton Range, looking squarely at Mount Moran. 

We're not sure how it happened. We've already hiked our trail of the day. But we just continued walking until we got to Leigh Lake. We had thought about kayaking the length of String Lake and then portaging onto Leigh Lake. But then we found out that you have to go back to the visitor center to get your boat inspected, and buy a $17 permit before putting even an inflatable boat on the waters of the national park. So instead of kayaking, we walked the route.

Then we realized that we could make this into a loop by crossing the bridge and walking back through the trees on the other side of String Lake. The good news is that hidden among those trees were more huckleberry bushes with newly ripened fruit!

Denisa was pretty happy with this discovery, and she kept a handful of berries at all times. Bears really love these berry treats, and we were hoping to get to share them. But again, we didn't see a single animal on this trail either. In fact, we talked to a young couple that were just completing the very arduous Cascade Canyon/Painted Canyon Loop. In the 18 miles they had hiked through some of the most beautiful Teton scenery, they didn't have a single wildlife sighting. They were so disappointed!

We had just enough energy to take the spur trail to Jenny Lake. We had hiked here in 2017, on our way up the Cascade Canyon Trail (where we saw a mother bear and her cub and a moose). After being without a cell phone signal all day, we suddenly got a text message right here. Mark had a seat on what we would name "telephone rock" and made his nightly call to his Mother.

The skies are turning gray, and by the time we finished this 5+ mile loop, String Lake was quiet. It's true, most tourists leave national parks by 5:00 and the parking lots once again had lots of empty spaces.

We drove to the north end of the park, and our legs had just enough energy to walk from the parking lot to the Jackson Lake Lodge. We're glad we had a good pizza lunch, because the only opening at the lodge dining room was at 9:00 p.m. We won't be staying that late. From the back patio of the lodge, we took this picture of the iconic craggly silhouettes of the Tetons. The smoky haze from the forest fires further west has obscured our views, but this evening we can see blue skies and white clouds over the Tetons.

We almost didn't make the 50-mile trip to see Grand Teton National Park today. After all, we visited here in 2017. But when you live this close, you just have to go see the Tetons!