Adventures to Oregon Day 4: Grand Tetons National Park

Driving South, leaving Yellowstone, we drive directly into the Grand Tetons. It is after 7pm, much later than we would have liked to leave Yellowstone….but, here we are, wishing we didn’t have 4 more hours to drive to our hotel in Idaho Falls…. wishing that we booked our hotel in Jackson Hole (in the Tetons, about 45 min. away) Oh well! So, our trip to Yellowstone was awesome… but once we got to the Tetons, it was quickly becoming apparent that it would have been better to be in the Tetons early in the morning…. It was so hazy as the sun was going down, and most of what we saw was silhouetted against the sky. But, I have to say…. I know why they call the Tetons GRAND….there are several other words I can think of…..(right from Roget’s Thesaurus) GLORIOUS, EXALTED, GRANDIOSE, LOFTY, MAGNIFICENT, MAJESTIC, MARVELOUS, MONUMENTAL, PALATIAL, REGAL, SPLENDID, STRIKING, UNREAL, WONDERFUL are just a few. As I am writing this I am thinking of the scripture….which is also a song by Third Day… Psalm 36:5-7 says: “Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings” As we are coming into the Tetons, I am in AWE…. words cannot describe the awesome power and majesty that the mountains inspire. ***Advance warning…. my photos are not as awesome as the sight I saw, with the sun going down and us being totally in the shade of the mountains, it was difficult lighting to say the least. I really don’t have much to say about our time in the Grand Tetons, mostly because we really just drove through, we didn’t stop other than to take some photos. But, I will leave you with some pictures to look at and a little bit of history and info about the Grand Tetons. Some fun facts about Jackson Hole, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, from jacksonhole.com:
-Yellowstone was the world’s first national park, created in 1872….18 years before Wyoming became a state.
-Grand Teton National Park was created in 1929 and greatly expanded in 1950 due to the determined efforts of John D. Rockefeller, who purchased and then donated a great deal of the land that is under protection today.
-Jackson Hole was originally named Jackson’s Hole for Davey Jackson, a mountain man who trapped in this area during the late 1800’s. “Hole” was a term used in that day to describe a high mountain valley.
-The National Elk Refuge, located just outside the town of Jackson, is the largest established elk preserve in North America. Up to 9,000 elk winter on the refuge and visitors can enjoy close-up views on daily sleigh rides from December through April.
-97% of the 3,826,407 acres in Teton County are federally owned or state managed, including the Grand Teton National Park, the Bridger-Teton National Forest, and the National Elk Refuge. Only 3% of the land in the Jackson Hole area is privately owned.
-The Bridger-Teton National Forest is the largest national forest in the lower 48 states, encompassing 1,694,574 acres.
-America’s firsts: First all-woman city council, elected to office in Jackson in 1920; First woman Governor elected; First government in world history to allow women to vote (in 1869, 51 years before the U.S. Constitutional amendment). Wyoming’s state slogan is “The Equality State”.
-Among all 50 U.S. states Wyoming ranks: 9th in size, 50th in population (only 5 people per square mile!).
-The world’s longest running Shoot-Out, which began in 1955, is held six nights a week from May-September on the Jackson Town Square.
-Wyoming’s first ski area was the Snow King Ski Area, which opened in Jackson in 1939. Snow King celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 1989.
-The U.S. Voyager II spacecraft, launched in 1977 to explore unknown reaches of the solar system, contains an Ansel Adams photograph of Jackson Hole as part of its artifacts cargo.
-On an average day at the Jackson Hole Ski Resort there are only 1,750 skiers skiing on the 2,500 acres of terrain at the ski area, offering one of the lowest skier densities (one skier per one-and-one-half acres!) of any ski resort in the country.
-The world’s only public auction of elk antlers takes place on the Jackson Town Square on the third Saturday in May each year. The antlers are shed by the elk that winter on the refuge and are collected by local Boy Scouts. The majority of the auction proceeds go back to the refuge for the next year’s elk feeding program and Asians buy the antlers for exported aphrodisiac potions. -The New York Philharmonic held the first summer residency in its 147-year history in Jackson Hole during the first two weeks of July, 1989. America’s oldest orchestra performed four concerts as a benefit for Jackson Hole’s 28-year-old Grand Teton Music Festival.
-Jackson Hole’s sister city is Lienz, Austria, dedicated as such in 1965.
-The first person to ski down the 13,770-foot Grand Teton was local resident Bill Briggs in 1971. He is currently the ski school director at the Snow King Ski Area.
-The headwaters of the Snake River are located in Teton County.
-John Wayne’s first speaking part was in “The Big Trail”, filmed in Jackson Hole in 1932. It also is reputed to be the first time he rode a horse!
-Over 15 feature films have been made on location in Jackson Hole including: “Shane”, “Spencer’s Mountain”, “Any Which Way You Can”, and “Rocky IV”.
-In June 1989, President George Bush chose to deliver his first major speech on the importance of the environment and clean air in an open meadow in front of the Tetons in Grand Teton National Park.
-In September 1989, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze held an historic Ministerial Meeting on the shores of Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Baker chose Jackson Hole to showcase the spectacular scenery and preserved heritage of America’s West.
-Jackson Hole has one of the lowest base elevations of any ski resort area in the Rocky Mountains, at just 6,311 feet. Most other ski resorts in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico have base elevations between 6,900 and 9,500 feet.
-Over 60 species of mammals, over 100 species of birds, and a half-a-dozen game fish can be found in the Jackson Hole/Yellowstone area. Most notable are big game such as elk, moose, bison, deer, antelope, mountain lion, grizzly and black bears, coyote; rare birds such as the bald eagle, trumpeter swan, blue heron, osprey, and native game fish such as the Snake River cutthroat trout and mackinaw lake trout.

Also… for some REALLY spectacular photos, visit the link….. and see James Neely’s “Tetons East and West” for some Awesome photos! His photos are worth seeing…. I highly recommend them! http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpn/sets/72157600077230261/ if you click on the “slideshow” button, it will play through all of them automatically. Also, if you view this blog during the day, you can click on the following link and see the Grand Teton live webcam, operated also by James Neely, and see the Tetons in real time, real weather, from the Idaho side. http://www.srv.net/~jpat/teton.html scroll to the bottom of the page and it tells you what you are seeing on the live web cam. Well, I guess that’s all for this post, just to let you know, we finally made it to our hotel, in Idaho Falls @ midnight. We took a wrong turn and ended up going about and hour out of the way before we noticed we were off track. On Day 5 we drive from Idaho Falls to Pendleton, OR, and we didn’t stop to see anything exciting, so, our next post picks up on Day 6 from Pendleton, OR to Monmouth, OR…. the Columbia River Gorge and Multnomah Falls. Thanks for reading… see you next time!