Day 4: Photography Day

We woke up super early to catch early morning light on the tetons. We stopped at Schwabachers Landing, Mormon Row, and the Snake River overlook before hitting the famous Oxbow Bend.

We were quite pleasantly surprised with the Landing. The trees were yellow and the snake river was so calm, it had perfect reflections. While we got a bit lost trying to find the famous barn on Mormon row (and failed to do so), we still liked the rustic barn we did find. We missed the Manhattan-like crowds at Oxbow because of all these earlier stops, but it was probably for the best. The trees didn't become fully in sun until about 9 am and being peak-autumn, that was the whole point of the shot!

After snapping thousands of photos on the outer loop road, we headed for lunch before taking the inner route past Jackson and Jenny Lakes. Per the advice of our waitress, we stopped and did the String Lake hike out to Jenny Lake. The shrubs on this hike were so beautiful-- all shades of red, orange and yellow surrounded us!

On our way through the inner drive, we had closer up views of the tetons, beautiful lake reflections, and even spotted some running elk.

When we approached Moose Junction, we started down the path of the scary route back to the hotel. We spotted two black bear off the side of the road that we stopped to watch. It was hear we learned of the family of moose that were currently frequenting the bridge at Moose Junction (appropriately named huh?). We back-tracked and were glad we did! We got to enjoy mommy, daddy, and baby moose chilling in the river.

Mommy, daddy, and baby moose

On our way back to the lodge, we got to enjoy several more black bear. We watched one climb a tree (pretty high) to get to the best berries. We hoped we'd get to watch him break the branch and fall, but his sharp claws and tree climbing experience prevented that.

We call this black bear the "tree bear."

For dinner, we drove into nearby Jackson Hole and ate at a highly acclaimed BBQ restaurant. Food was pretty good, but the service was horrible. We really enjoyed this little ski town and it's shops though. We hope to someday go back to ski!