We dragged ourselves out of our tent around 5:30. Cold and clouds hung low over our camp. We hopped in the car with the jetboil , hot chocolate and cameras ready to go. We drove north for about 20 minutes and stopped at the iconic Mormon Row barn to capture the sunrise.
We then drove south and across to the other side of the park to Jenny Lake and stopped to make some roadside hot chocolate. I decided that this camping trip wasn’t complete without a roasted marshmallow, so I slightly toasted and slightly burned the mallow on Jakes Jetboil under the Grand Teton for a nice morning breakfast of hot chocolate and pure sugar.
We took a drive towards town and then took a sharp left all the way down towards the Elk Refuge. There we were told we would be able to see Big Horned Sheep. We were not disappointed. We spent about an hour and a half amazed at the pure agility of the animals hopping alongside the seemingly sheer cliffs, running left, right, up and down. The juveniles came down towards the road and all of a sudden the big males started appearing from the other side of the rock, one by one, as if they were being introduced individually at an awards show. The two dozen sheep crossed the road, making sure to be super in the way of all the cars trying to pass.
Watching all the jumping around made us tired, or maybe it was the early roll call… We said goodbye for now and headed to camp for a much needed nap.
We departed camp again as the rain was starting, hopped in the car, this time with some cheese and crackers and headed north towards Oxbow Bend. On the way we were stopped by about 12 Buffalo running over a knocked down wooden fence to the other side of the road. With them was a little baby that was simply too cute not to take a dozen photos of.
We continued the drive with another stop near the bend where numerous cars were stopped and NPS Wildlife Rangers were showing everyone where the grizzlies were. This time a mamma Grizzly with 2 babies were running around the sage brush meadow along the river. We snapped some more pictures and went back to the car for some cheese and dry cover from the outside rain.
We drove back to camp, watched the sunset at Glacier Point, and made a quick warm soup before heading to bed.
It’s been decided that Noey is good at manifesting wildlife!
