Grand Teton National Park...buffaloes!

Dad and Mom

On Tuesday morning, August 28th, we had a slow start. Loading the car onto the tow dolly in the gravel proved wholly unsuccessful (ramps spun out, one got caught under the car, a neighbor came to our rescue, etc, etc). Yikes. After finally loading the car (on pavement), we met the parents at their hotel. We four sat around and chatted in the morning sunshine until after 11am, when we bade them goodbye and they headed for the airport. What a short trip, but we had so much fun with them!

Ken and I drove back into Yellow- stone via the west entrance, and through the park out the south end. Once again, as we made our way into the park we spotted a buffalo standing around chewing on the grass and another further up the road just relaxing in the sunshine. Ha! I love buffaloes!

Beyond the turn off for Old Faithful and along the seven miles of John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway toward Grand Teton National Park, we saw not one animal. No buffaloes, no moose, no elk, not even chipmunks. And the scenery had closed in on us with the skinny lodgepole pine trees lining both sides of the roadway, though we could occasionally see the mountains through them. We did cross the Continental Divide three times, grinding our way up the steep hills only to pick up substantial speed on the other side.

Jackson Lake in Grand Teton NP

As we entered the Grand Teton National Park, we began to notice the landscape open into large meadows and vast lakes. With the high temperature for the day near 92 degrees, we toe-dipped in beautiful Jackson Lake. The stunning Teton Mountains towered behind the lake in the distance with the afternoon sun casting them in shadow.

North Buffalo wildfire, started August 24, 2012

Ominously, we noticed a wildfire coloring the eastern sky with huge plumes of white and pink smoke. As we traveled south into the park, we could see the smoke billowing from at least three different spots just behind the hill. Yikes. In the meadow between us and the wildfire, however, we saw a huge herd of buffaloes. Driving the RV and with no turnouts near them, I couldn't stop to take their pictures. Boo. In any case, we were excited to see so many buffaloes all in one place on federally protected land, behind only a thin fence designed to discourage them walking from the roadway.

Pronghorn antelope, not far from the campground

As we approached the southern end of the park, we turned down the street to the campground and saw the familiar blob of cars on both sides of the road snapping pictures. The band of pronghorn antelopes browsing through the sagebrush had everyone enthralled. We took a few pictures of the crowd of them and they didn't even run away. Pronghorn, with the ability to run 65 mph to escape cheetahs, are the fastest land animal in North America, despite the fact that cheetahs have been extinct here for over 10,000 years. While we and the throng of other tourists watched them, they seemed content and wholly concerned with eating rather than escaping. Perhaps we humans looked as slow as we are.

The Grand Tetons

We set up camp at the Gros Ventre Campground, a very quiet and very dark park in the woods near the Gros Ventre River. How nice to enjoy both after all the horn-blowing from the trains traveling through Bozeman every night for a week. We settled in for dinner in the RV before making our way to Jackson, Wyoming for a few groceries and the obligatory ice cream cone from Dairy Queen. Nice.

John and Bartha Moulton homestead

In the morning, we took a different route out of the campground and down Mormon Row, an old, abandoned series of farm buildings constructed by homesteaders in the early 1900s. These spare properties comprised the tiny town of Grovont, originally settled in the 1890s, and were worked by three Moulton families as well as three other Mormon families.

Thomas Murphy homestead on Mormon Row

After digging miles of ditches from the Gros Ventre River for a crop irrigation system the group enjoyed the fruits of their labor in summer, but the winter proved much more difficult without a regular unfrozen water supply. According to the pamphlet, in 1927 a warm spring developed after a big flood and the Kelly Warm Springs provided year round water to the residents after that. But by the mid-1900s, the Mormon community's land was acquired as part of the Grand Teton National Park to curb development near the mountains. We certainly enjoyed the decaying buildings as a spectacular foreground to the impressive landscape.

A bit further north we toured the Cunningham Cabin, another abandoned homestead from the early 1900s bought out during the expansion of the park. J. Pierce Cunningham established the Bar Flying U Ranch here and worked the land to support his family between 1888 and 1928 when he sold out to John D. Rockefeller's Snake River Land Company. In 1925, a petition organized by Mr. Cunningham and Si Ferrin, and signed by 97 of the valley's struggling ranchers, sought a buyer who would consolidate all the ranches in the valley as a recreational area. A year later, the superintendent of Yellowstone at the time, Horace Albright introduced Rockefeller to the Jackson Hole area.

J. Pierce Cunningham homestead

Beginning in 1927, Rockefeller eventually purchased over 32,000 acres under his Snake River Land Company with the intention of donating it to the federal government for the expansion of the Grand Teton National Park. Infighting and bickering between recreational interests, big business and the park system led to a 15 year delay in accepting the donated land, finally pushed by Rockefeller's threat of selling the land on the open market. What a gift!

Jenny Lake

With the huge bison herd we saw the day before stuck in my mind, we drove north to see if we could find them again. We did, but we pledged to come back later in the day for pictures of them with the sun lower in the sky and hopefully not turning them to indiscernible blobs of dark matter. Grr. Still, how exciting!

We rounded the north end of the park road to head down the west side of the loop past the buffaloes. We pulled into Jenny Lake, a picturesque lake of cerulean blue water formed by a retreating glacier some 12,000 years ago. We hiked down the short path to the water's edge where we found small families bouncing through the shallows and taking pictures of one another. With the Teton Mountains much closer than on the east side of the park loop, we admired the stark crevices and serrated peaks across the lake. A few bits of snow could still be seen in the mountaintops, even in the end of August, though a roadside 'Glacier View Overlook' offers no such view anymore.

We headed back toward Jackson for lunch and found Bubba's Barbecue, a standard fare place with reasonable prices. Wandering around town, we popped into a couple of thrift stores and through the town square where we saw 4 gigantic arches of hundreds of elk antlers each. Yikes. That's a lot of shed antlers. According to the sign next to them, the Boy Scouts of America and employees of the nearby National Elk Refuge collected the antlers and assembled the arches in 1960. The scouts continue to collect the shed antlers each spring and then a huge auction is conducted in the town square to benefit the elk themselves, such as growing more natural grasses or improving irrigation on the refuge.

As we strolled the streets of Jackson, we saw hundreds of little businesses tucked into old storefronts, lending the town an 'Old West' feel. Some of the businesses are in on the act with western themed names, but virtually all are aimed at the tourist, preferably bearing cash. We continued walking along the wooden sidewalks and peeking in the windows of the stores until we slowly made our way back to the car.

On our way out of town, we stopped in at the Visitor Center where an exhibit about the elk refuge led us to an upper level and out a back door. On the patio overlooking the refuge lands we saw not one elk. Evidently they use the refuge in winter, gathering in a herd with as many as 5,000 to 7,000 elk. During summer they hide out in the mountains snacking and avoiding predators.

Coyote on the prowl

Although we saw no elk, we did see a coyote on the prowl for food. We watched as he stalked someone small in the tall grass until he finally pounced. Over and over the coyote stalked and pounced, though from our vantage point, we didn't see that he actually caught anyone in the process. Inside the visitor center we read that coyotes feed on rodents, so we figured statistically he'll eventually catch something.

North Buffalo Fire

As we headed back north and with the sun lower in the afternoon sky, we noticed the wildfire had increased in size. A memo on a placard across the street from the buffaloes, posted by the National Park Service, mentioned that the fire had consumed over 8,500 acres of land in the 4 days since it had started. In such a remote area, however, nothing was being done to actually put the fire out and only a line on the north end was being held by firefighters to protect 'valuables' (probably homes). All through out the parks we have read signs and brochures proclaiming the importance of natural fires to the regeneration of forests and the consumption of thick undergrowth that inhibits both flora and fauna. The fire suppression policies of the park system's first 100 years were determined to actually undermine the forest's ability to renew itself naturally, in essence choking out some species of plants and trees as well as animals.

Horses

Buffaloes!

Some of the buffaloes were gathered near the fence and rest of them were scattered across the giant meadow in which they were snacking and napping. With sheer delight, we crossed the road and took pictures of them on the other side of the spindly fence, hoping we wouldn't spark a stampede or a goring. Fortunately neither occurred. They seemed content to ignore us as we (I) giggled with glee at all of them.

More buffaloes!

A quick estimate put the entire herd at around six or seven hundred, though there may have been more. Snacking and napping near the buffaloes was a band of pronghorn antelopes, probably 25 or 30 of them. And across the street, near the car, a big group of horses stood at the fence, perhaps hoping for something tastier than the grass they were chewing.

With the evening coming, we headed back to the RV for dinner and happy hour and then worked on a crossword puzzle until the light of the moon was all the light left. What a fabulous day.