The Tetons Via Idaho Falls

 

It’s about 300 miles to the Grand Tetons from Ketchum, much farther than we like to drive in a day, so we decided to stop and check out Idaho Falls on Tuesday. On the way we passed Craters of the Moon National Monument, a place we’ve never been, and stopped at the visitor center. We would have liked to spend a night there and go for a hike but the campground is closed for remodeling, and there are no trails from the VC, so we just looked at the exhibits and went on our way. Interesting but we’ve visited several other volcanic areas that looked very similar.

We planned to spend the night at the free South Tourist Park in Idaho Falls after stocking up at Walmart but didn’t realize the park is closed for construction. So we decided to continue on 20 miles east to Juniper Campground, a very nice county park on Ririe Reservoir where we’ve stayed twice before.

There were very few people there, and most of the sites are full hookups for $18/night, but we opted for the same no-hookup waterfront site we had in 2014 for $10.

This was our strangest sighting on the water.

It was lovely there but very windy. We didn’t get much sleep the first night since we kept the car hooked up and something kept banging around.

It was windy again on Wednesday so we decided to hang there another night and drive back to Idaho Falls to the River Walk. There are 5 miles of paved trails on both sides of the Snake River, although a couple sections were closed and being worked on. We had a nice walk, followed by excellent pizza and beer at MacKenzie River Pizza Co.

The city has done a great job of turning the dam and hydroelectric plant into a very pleasant area.This is the first LDS temple built in Idaho, and definitely a city landmark.

On Thursday we drove the 100 miles to Gros Ventre campground near Jackson, WY in Grand Teton National Park. Next to Zion this is definitely our favorite national park, and we love this first-come-first-served campground. We got a site with a nice view and had moose in our backyard yesterday morning.

A nice yard with the Gros Ventre River running through the trees behind our site.

How fun to open the blinds and see this.

We hiked a 6 mile loop to Bradley and Taggart lakes yesterday. We did this trail in 2010 but didn’t remember much of it. Nice view of the Tetons on our way to the trail.

And some shots from the trail. Although there are bear warnings everywhere the only wildlife we saw was a fox run across the trail in front of us.

It’s a bit early for fall colors but we’re hoping to stay here long enough to see the trees change. It was 27 when I got up this morning, so we’ll see how much cold we can tolerate.