Grand Teton National Park is a U.S. National Park in northwestern Wyoming. The park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. Grand Teton National Park is only 10 miles south of Yellowstone National Park, to which it is connected by the National Park Service-managed John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway. Along with surrounding national forests, these three protected areas constitute the almost 18,000,000-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem one of the world’s largest intact mid-latitude temperate ecosystems.
Established: February 26, 1929
Size: 310,044 acres
Rank: 25
#Visitors in 2018: 3,491,151
(August 2015) My boyfriend (at the time) and I visited Grand Teton National Park right after our summer photography class in Missoula, MT ended. We never had much time to travel far from Missoula during our summer as we had so many class assignments and weekend workshops in addition to a full course load M-F. Our plans were to visit Grand Teton and then head up to Glacier/Waterton and Banff before heading back home to Wisconsin. By mid-August, the forest fires all over the west were pretty bad.
Our first stop was the picturesque Craig Thomas Discovery & Visitor Center where we got the best view of the Teton Range of our entire 3-day visit. The smoky haze from the forest fires obscured the normally crisp outline of the jagged mountains. Our photography skills were stretched during this visit; both in capturing and processing the photos.
We stayed in a hotel in Jackson and got up early the next morning to shoot the iconic Mormon Row barns at sunrise. Too bad the Teton Range was so hazy. It got worse as the day went on.
Next stop in the still early light was Schwabacher Landing on the Snake River. The water was so still and the reflections were beautiful.
One of our photography school assistants saw from Facebook that we were in Grand Teton. He was also in the park, so we arranged to meet up with him and do some hiking and photographing. We took a shuttle boat across Jenny Lake and hiked up to Inspiration Point and then down to Hidden Falls. We found that photographing the falls resulted in better photos in the hazy conditions than shooting the mountain scenery. And, well… water falls are one of my very favorite subjects!!
After dinner, we set out again to try to shoot star trails. We parked in one of the turn offs in the park and set up our folding chairs and small cooler and then set up our cameras to take a series of photos that were later stacked in Photoshop. Again, not the best conditions, but it was fun to try.
The next day, we decided to do some more hiking. We drove to the Leigh Lake Trailhead and hiked around Leigh Lake and String Lake.
We cut our visit a bit short and headed up to Yellowstone. We would like to come back to Grand Teton when the air is crisp and clear so we can experience the Teton Range at its best.
Our final farewell…..
