Yellowstone

East Yellowstone to Jackson Hole WY.

A few years ago my parents and grandparents brought my sister and I to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Remembering how beautiful the park was, it was a definite must for my photo trip.

After driving for about an hour, we arrived at Yellowstone National Park. Starting at an elevation of about 7,000 ft., the East entrance led us to views of snow covered mountains and then to the Yellowstone lake. The drive was breathtaking!

 Yellowstone National Park has two main loops that look like a figure 8. The East entrance is on the right side where the loops meet.

During our first day we drove from the East entrance to the bottom of the figure 8 (the South entrance). During the drive, we made a few stops at some magnificently colored springs, saw our first Elk and watched a bison walk right next to the little guy. Yellowstone was spectacular!

From there we continued South to the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. With the mountain range landscape behind Jackson Lake, the drive down to the Tetons was beautiful. I decided to drive closer to the mountains on the way back to Yellowstone, so we ended up driving a straight shot to Jackson Hole. Remembering how much fun my family and I had walking around this town, I was so happy to visit it again.

Jackson Hole was as fun as I remembered. Instead of walking around the shops (like I did with my family) we walked around an outside art gallery. Looking through the portfolios of local photographers and artists was really inspiring. After collecting a few business cards we walked down the strip of shops and stopped at a camera shop. After chatting it up for about half an hour, I was able to find out a few nice places to shoot the Tetons.

Since it was getting late we decided to camp out in Jackson Hole.

It was a nice full day that went by really fast. We decided to stay the night right outside the West entrance in the town of West Yellowstone.


The next morning we decided to walk around the town again. We found out that the outside art gallery was a three day event that ended that day with an art auction. Sticking around the auction I was shocked when the biddings for the first few paintings got as high as $2,500. Not being able to see much but a huge crowd, we decided to head back North.

The scenic route to the Tetons was nice. We were able to eat a nice lunch and go on a few short hikes. Following the mountain side back up to Yellowstone, we headed to the West side of the park. It is here we waited 45 minutes to see Old Faithful and walk around more springs.