Summer 2011

A good day. We got up to cloudy skies but the forecast for Victor showed mostly sunny and it turned out that way. The forecast for Jackson Hole was not as promising, but it turned out better than expected. The clouds were still hiding the mountain tops so we could not see the full majesty of the Teton Range. We drove through Jackson to the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitors Center where we picked up the Park Service Newsletter and then proceeded on the Teton Park Road.

We had decided to drive to Colters Bay Visitors Center, the northern most visitors center in the park, and then work back towards Jackson with stops on the Park Road and a couple of side trips. Colters Bay Visitors Center houses The David T. Vernon Indian Arts Museum which had an interesting collection of artifacts. Colters Bay is in the east central part of Jackson Lake and has visitor services including a campground, lodging and a marina. We headed south from Colters Bay and took a side trip of the Park road to the Oxbow Bend Turnout, which overlooks an arm of the Snake River. Oxbow Bend had to be one of the most scenic spots that we saw. We backtracked to the Park Road and headed south to the Signal Mountain Road, which we took to the top of the mountain. The overlook at the top of Signal Mountain offers an almost complete view of Jackson Hole. We continued south and stopped at a few turnouts to take photographs and then proceeded to the Jenny Lake Loop Road and stopped at the Jenny Lake Overlook which provided beautiful views of the mountains. As we returned to the end of the Park Road, Susie suggested that we drive a bit north on US 191 to Antelope Flats Road and then turn down Mormon Row, a Mormon settlement dating back to the 1890s. Mormon Row, a dirt road, ended in Gros Ventre Road which we took back to US 191 south to Jackson and then over the Teton Pass, for the last time this trip, to Victor.

As you can se from the pictures below, the cloud deck was low and that kept us from really getting the full view of the Teton Range. To me this is an excuse for a return trip to the area some time in the future.