Trip Report - Chapter 22 Idaho & Montana
July 9, 1998
6/18 As promised, this is being written from Idaho, after a fairly quick trip from Las Vegas. We're at the Twin Falls/Jerome KOA, near Twin Falls Idaho. The drive from Las Vegas, mostly on US 93 and SR318, was very interesting. This route is through remarkably unpopulated territory, going up the full length of Nevada, just inside the eastern border of the state. The demographics file in Map'n'Go told us that one ZIP Code region we passed through (89017) has 25 families. There is only one real town (Ely) along the approximately 400 miles of highway. There are small clusters of business at the I-80 intersection and at the Nevada side of the Idaho border. So travel is very fast, along a hundred miles at a time of ruler-straight two-lane highway, all in good condition. It's a wonderful alternative to I-15, which runs roughly parallel, but on the Utah side of the border. We spent the night in Valley View RV Park, just north of Ely, after finding that the free RV Park at the Holiday Inn Casino in Ely was full.
The highway runs up a valley a few miles wide, with low mountains on each side. Occasionally, a higher snow-capped mountain range would appear, further back from the road. Inviting little jeep trails disappeared toward these mountains every 10 miles or so, sometimes labeled with the names of ghost towns. Someday, perhaps we'll do this trip more leisurely and explore these places.
In Ely, we spent part of the morning at the Northern Nevada Railroad Museum. This is a fascinating place that we recommend to anyone coming this way. The complex was headquarters for a 140-mile "short line" railroad company which ran north up the valley from several mines in this area to the main east-west rail line. The original locomotive used when the railroad was started in 1906 is here, and is being restored to operable condition. Another, somewhat newer, steam locomotive, has been restored and makes regular weekend tourist runs to one of the abandoned mining sites and ghost town. When the railway shut down, the buildings and contents were preserved largely intact. Closets and old oak cabinets are full of bound volumes of payroll records going all the way back to 1906, original blueprints of the buildings, original maps of the railroad line, etc. The maintenance building for the locomotives is also intact - with the employee notices on the walls dating from about 1956. The machine shop is still operable - with huge lathes and milling machines still powered by flat belts from overhead power shafts. As we walked through the machine shop, an old machinist was busy working on re-machining parts for the locomotive restoration. He was struggling to move one of the flat drive belts to a different pulley, high up near the ceiling. As I picked up a piece of pipe to help him shove the belt, he commented that OSHA would have fits if they ever walked into the place, with all these open belts and pulleys and no sign of protective devices.
Much of this complex is not yet restored - it is just there, in much the same condition as when it was abandoned, and tourists can wander freely among railway cars, locomotives, line repair equipment, a huge railway crane, all sitting on rails in the original maintenance sheds awaiting restoration. The yard is cluttered with hopper cars used to transport the ore from the mines to smelters elsewhere. Volunteers, some of them retired railroad employees, are slowly restoring some of the rolling equipment. We saw one of the huge diesel engines from an early diesel-electric locomotive spread out in pieces on the floor - cylinders big enough to put your foot in, camshafts 8 feet long.
Just before reaching our campground at Twin Falls, we passed over the impressive Snake River Gorge on the Perrine Bridge, whetting our appetite for some local exploring tomorrow.
6/19 Malad State Park surrounds a narrow canyon which runs a few miles north from the Snake River Canyon. In the bottom is the madly rushing Malad River, foaming over a small but impressive waterfall in the park, fed entirely by huge springs in the gorge wall. The layered volcanic basalt structure of the plains running north from this area results in a huge aquifer, trapping water from rain on the plain and in the mountains to the north. Much of this water is now pumped out for agricultural purposes. Some continues to gush out of springs in the side of the Snake River Gorge, resulting in numerous little waterfalls running down the cliffs into the river. They run all year, partly fed by agricultural irrigation runoff.
Across the river from the park, we drove through the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument - where a fossil herd of zebra-like horses was discovered (now the Idaho State Fossil! Does your state have a state fossil? <g>). There are interpretive signs along short hiking trails, but no views of fossils or archaeological sites (these sites are mostly along the unstable cliffs above the river. We did see the ruts of the Oregon Trail, where it climbs through the hills on the south side of the river. 300,000 people walked this trail, before the transcontinental railroads were completed. By the time they reached this point, they had walked 1300 miles, with another 700 yet to go.
6/20 Driving around Twin Falls, we noted the rich amalgam of smells - sage, general "green" smells, fresh plowed dirt, fertilizer, manure, and we finally identified a pervasive odor - drying hay. Not at all what we were used to in the east - where I thought of drying hay as a sweet smell. Here it is a tangy sharp-edged smell, as though some of the hay was fermenting a bit. Perhaps it is fermenting - it's been a very cool wet spring. A flock of yellow-headed blackbirds squabbled noisily in a swampy area beside an irrigation canal, a new bird for us. The handbook says their voice is like a rusty gate hinge - I agree! Irrigation canals everywhere. The sprinklers are running, and we have to be alert to roll up the car windows occasionally. Liquid fertilizer is stored in tanks along the road and mixed directly into the irrigation water at the huge pumps which are lifting water out of the narrow canals running alongside every field.
We wandered along the Snake River Gorge, on local farm roads, through tens of thousands of acres of lovely cropland - several types of grain, corn, potatoes, sugar beets, peas, beans, and huge quantities of hay. I pulled off the road near a farmer's irrigation system and looked it over carefully. I now sort of understand how they work, but still have some questions - I'll have to watch for a farmer I can quiz. These things are pipes, up to 1/4 mile long, which carry water and also form the axle for a huge set of wheels, one wheel every 50 feet or so. The whole thing can thus be moved slowly down the field, although it must be re-coupled to a new water outlet every 100 feet or so, limited by the length of huge flexible hose that can be dragged along. Some of the newer ones are huge cantilever structures, high above the field, supported by wheels that are much further apart - perhaps 50 yards per section. Amazing!
In other parts of the country, we saw a circular irrigation system: One end of a half-mile-long pipe is fixed to a swivel coupling at a well and pump. The other end is motorized wheels, and rotates continuously around the center. Huge impulse sprinkler heads are spread out along the pipe. The resulting one-mile-diameter green circles are visible from 40,000 feet up in the air during transcontinental plane trips, looking like someone randomly scattered huge green poker chips on the desert. Many of these are now abandoned, as the water table dropped from over-use and the wells have gone dry.
Shoshone Falls - spectacular. Not the biggest we've ever seen, but perhaps the most visually interesting, because of the multiple cataracts of various shapes and sizes all merging in together. A local bystander said that the Falls are running at the highest volume she has ever seen. Signs at the park indicate that the Falls dry up during the summer, when a large fraction of the River's flow is diverted into irrigation canals, upstream.
Twin Falls is no longer "twin" - One of the two cataracts has been blocked by a power plant and is completely dry.
6/21 The drive up US 93 north from Twin Falls to Craters of the Moon National Monument started with irrigated farm land as far as the eye could see, near the Snake River, then moved into gently rolling sagebrush and grass country. Then as we approached the mountains, 100 miles north and 1500 feet higher, we again saw irrigated farmland. From the tops of the little hills, we had very long views in all directions - perhaps 50 miles out to a flat horizon. To the north, we could see snow-capped mountains, which slowly rose up as we drove toward them.
Craters of the Moon is well named. It is located in the middle of several hundred square miles of lava flows - stark, black, with hardly anything growing. The lava flowed from a rift many miles long, and so did not create huge mountains. There are modest-sized cinder cones and vent tubes, and huge lava sheets that flowed from here almost 100 miles south to the Twin Falls area, where it dammed the Snake River and forced it to make a huge detour to the south.
The lava is marvelously varied. Some areas flowed out in long ropy structures. Some are ragged agglomerations of porous cinders. Some areas look like someone randomly dropped gigantic cowpies, one on top of another, until the ground was covered with multiple layers of gloppy heaps, which flowed just a little before solidifying. As the rock cooled and hardened, it shrank and cracked. Then, over the centuries, the cracks developed into three-dimensional networks, breaking up the rock into piles of loose random - sized chunks. Some of these areas would be almost impossible to cross on foot. Lava tubes and caves occur in the park, and some are open for exploration (bring a flashlight).
We arrived at noon on Sunday, hoping that this would guarantee us a spot in the campground. An hour later would have been better, since some folks were still packing up to leave, and some sites were occupied by picnickers, just there for lunch. At 1:30, the park campground was 90% empty. By 8:30pm, it was 85% full (52 sites total). Only about 1/3 or less of the sites were big enough and level enough to accommodate our 35' trailer and the biggest sites were taken first (often by a pup tent or a tiny VW microbus), so it's a good thing we were there early. We were told that the campground was jammed to overflowing and turning people away over the weekend. Anyway, we are in a nice large site, with a black cinder surface and a beautiful view of a pile of broken lava chunks just outside our door. The typical rock is a black basalt that is mostly gas bubbles, so it is fragile and light weight. A ranger demonstrated that the rocks float on water. It is very abrasive, and squeaks underfoot.
The lava flows have occurred periodically over a million years or so. The most recent flow, near where we are camped, was about 2,000 years ago, and still looks new and ragged. A short distance away, we can see much older cinder cones that have weathered smooth and are covered with sagebrush and limber pines. The spring flowers are in bloom, and there are acres of fine black cinders, dotted with large numbers of magenta monkey flowers, showy white dwarf buckwheat, occasional purple spikes of larkspur, small white or pinkish scabbeous penstemon, yellow cinquefoil and senecio.
6/22 Yesterday, we phoned the Colter Bay RV Park, which several RV-Talk folks have recommended. It's located conveniently half way between Teton and Yellowstone Parks. It was full, and was fully booked at least for the next several days (mid-week). The only other place in this area with hookups was Flagg Ranch, about which we knew nothing. It's listed in Map'n'Go, but not Woodall's. We phoned and made reservations for a week (at $30/night - it better be good!)
Map'n'Go again routed us along 40 miles of mud ruts. Fortunately, when we phoned for reservations, we asked about this road and then did some re-planning. We took US 26 from Idaho Falls into Teton - a much longer route, but good road and pretty scenery. We'd have liked to stop and look around Idaho Falls, but were pressed for time and only stopped briefly for fuel and groceries. The weather got steadily worse as we approached the park - threatening storm clouds over the mountains. The road through the Park is terrible - broken pavement, frost heaves, and often no shoulders. We had two long delays at road construction sites, and got to Flagg Ranch quite late. Fortunately, sunset isn't until almost 9:30 p.m. The campground is quite pleasant - large sites in a lodgepole pine forest. The Snake River is a short walk down from the back of the campground. The convenience store is better stocked than most, the gas station has diesel fuel, and the restaurant looks quite pleasant. But the management is decidedly unfriendly to computers - my request for a modem hookup got a very firm "no".
6/24 Yesterday, it rained all day. We stayed home, catching up on reading, writing, and chores. The rain let up in mid-afternoon today, and we actually saw the sun. We headed out to drive up Signal Mountain, for a nice panoramic view of the valley. The "mountain" is a glacial moraine, a pile of fertile silt and gravel rising 800 feet from the middle of the valley floor. The forest on the mountain is dense and plant life in the clearings is somewhat more extensive than elsewhere, because of the richer soil. We saw Woodlandstar, Utah honeysuckle, and Stoneseed (Columbia Puccoon), a pretty yellow flower whose root was used as a contraceptive by Shoshone women.
In early evening, we took a 2-mile hike from Colter Bay around two small lakes where rare trumpeter swans were rumored to be nesting. The Yellowstone/Teton area is the only nesting site for this species in the lower 48 states. As we approached the first lake, we saw large white birds, and quietly eased down to the shore. We now understand why trumpeter swans are a very rare endangered species. Just as we got close enough to get a good look a group of five, they metamorphosed into white pelicans - the long neck of the swan sliding smoothly up through the head to become the long bill of the pelican. The pelican isn't a bad consolation prize. It has a nine-foot wingspan, all white except for black wingtips.
Later, we saw another trumpeter swan, nesting on a small island, surrounded by acres of Rocky Mountain Pond Lilies in the middle of a pond fittingly named, Swan Lake. This bird remained a swan, fidgeting a bit but remaining on its nest while we stared. Nearby, several beavers scurried busily around the roof of their lodge.
The frequent meadows among the forest were covered with spring flowers - mostly new to us. We enjoyed the yellow Glacier Lily - apparently the same as our eastern Trout Lily (Dog's Tooth Violet). Intense purple Larkspur was everywhere. We also saw the Nutall Violet (bright yellow, and a purple violet that isn't in our book.
6/25 It's raining again, occasionally turning to hail. We decided to drive up through part of Yellowstone in spite of the lousy visibility. As we stopped near Old Faithful, the rain stopped, a bit of blue sky appeared here and there, and we used the opportunity to take the several-mile walk through the many geysers and hot springs. Old Faithful, although reputed to have become unfaithful, erupted within a minute of the time posted by the Park Service - just as impressive as its photographs. Walking among all these steaming vents is a weird experience. Wind-blown tendrils of steam swirl around us, smelling of sulfur and other unidentifiable things. The ground is coated with several colors of mineral deposits, creating frozen mineral paths running down the slopes to the river. The ponds are various shades of blue, orange, and brown, depending on the temperature (the orange and brown are algae). The ground all around these ponds is dotted with large animal droppings, and the fringes of the ponds are occasionally defaced by big hoofprints. Bison? Elk?
The Fringed Gentian is the official flower of Yellowstone National Park, and indeed we saw it everywhere, especially around the geysers and hot springs where little else would grow. The Mountain Bluebird is another new bird to us. We saw a brilliantly blue male hovering a few feet above the ground, directly in front of Old Faithful.
As we drove back home in late evening, we came upon a traffic jam, caused by a moose grazing 100 feet or so from the road. Everyone here seems excited about moose. But we've ha numerous close and too-close encounters with moose during our eastern Canada canoe trips. It's Elk that we want to see, but so far, they seem shy and we've yet to spot one, even at a distance.
6/27 Another cold rainy day! But again, the clouds broke in mid-afternoon and we headed out for some sightseeing. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is just one more long skinny hole in the ground, gouged out by running water - but with differences. This canyon, narrow and up to 1200' deep, is cut almost entirely through Rhyolite, silicon-based like granite, but structurally very unlike granite. It is a loosely compacted volcanic ash, and hence quite soft and easily eroded. Through this region, much of it is stained faintly yellow by impurities - probably the "yellow stone" of the park name. The canyon walls are spotted here and there with other colors, deposited by steam vents bringing up various chemicals from far below. Here and there, tendrils of steam can be seen drifting up from the walls.
The Yellowstone River has a huge water flow, at least this time of year. The numerous rapids and waterfalls along our route are converting potential energy to kinetic energy at a prodigious rate, and judging by the sound and the fury, I'd expect to feel the heat radiating from the bottoms of the falls. I could use some heat today! But this water is fresh from the snowfields (which still cover the nearby mountains), and warming it a degree or two is hardly noticeable.
My usual reaction when looking at this kind of river is to wonder whether a sufficiently skilled team could run it in rafts or kayaks. In this case, the answer seems to be NO, mostly because the canyon walls are continuously steep and there seems to be no way to get around the several large waterfalls (one is 308 feet high!). The intrusion of a hard, durable, lava flow into the ubiquitous rhyolite created the lip of a huge dam, holding back the vast Yellowstone Lake. When the water spilled over the dam into the soft rhyolite, it quickly started the process of chewing its way all the way from this 8000 foot-high plateau down to sea level. It isn't down to sea level yet, and I suppose eventually it will find something harder under the rhyolite, but from what we saw today, it is currently digging itself deeper into the earth at a geologically rapid rate.
The entire area is still geologically unstable. One of the popular tourist overlooks on the west side of the canyon broke loose and dropped into the canyon, widening the canyon by 100 feet, during a Richter-6.1 earthquake in (1976?). The literature doesn't mention whether any tourists were present at the time.
The Mud Volcano area is another of the many geothermal vent areas in the park. In contrast to the Old Faithful area, which has slightly alkaline water, this area has a high sulfur content and is acidic. Sometimes Very acidic. Sulfur Cauldron, a large bubbling pool in this area, has a pH of 1.2, which the brochure says is "about the same as battery acid". It's probably not a good idea to fall in.
This area is changing quite rapidly. In the 100 years or so that it has been a tourist attraction, some features have gone dormant, and new ones have appeared. The Mud Geyser used to periodically send a 10-foot diameter jet of mud up to 50 feet high. Today it just sits there, grumbling and sizzling, venting puffs of steam. There are several expanses of gaunt dead trees, killed when the surrounding soil rapidly became hot due to a relocation of the steam vents deep below.
Dragon's Mouth Spring is too good to be true - it ought to be in Disney World, not here. It's a rock cavern which emits a continuous seething rumbling sound, and belches huge puffs of sulphurous steam and jets of hot water.
The local fauna seem to like the area around the hot springs. At one point along the boardwalk, a small herd of bison was grazing just a few feet from the path. Here, unlike a zoo, there are no fences separating the tourists from the resident animals. The horns looked sharp, and most of the tourists looked nervous as they edged along the path trying to look inconspicuous. Bison are remarkably ugly at this time of year - shedding their thick winter fur, which hangs from their backs and sides in huge grimy patches. There were also warnings posted, requesting tourists not to dispute the use of the boardwalks with the local grizzly bears. But no bears - we've yet to see a grizzly in the wild (although we've had several encounters with black bears in our Canadian canoe-tripping.)
We again found that the most reliable way to discover the wildlife is to drive the roads watching for traffic jams. At one small roadside pullout, we found cars jammed in, parked two and three layers deep. We jammed in too, got out the binoculars, and watched a pair of wolves going about their business a few hundred yards way, disappearing and reappearing through the sagebrush on the other side of the river. Others mentioned that a pair of sandhill cranes were hunkered down near the river bank - possibly the reason for the wolf activity. But the birds were well concealed and we never saw them.
At several points, we had to slow for crowds watching moose or bison. After dark, our headlights caught a mule deer standing at the side of the road calmly watching traffic go by. But where are the Elk?
6/28 The Elk have appeared! As usual, we found them by watching for traffic jams, and then joined the dozens of camera-toting people lining the roadside to watch a group of five Elk munch their way across a lush grassy meadow. They're beautiful - antlers already large and upholstered with light brown velvet which appears silver-tipped in the sunlight. The big, sturdy, bodies are quite distinctive - not easily confused with other vaguely similar beasts, now that we've had a chance to stare for a while. I dug out the tripod and the 300-mm. telephoto to record the event with some close-up shots.
The rest of the day was spent driving through more of the park, stopping several times to take walks of up to a mile through more fields of geysers, fumaroles, hot springs, and mud pots. The Artist's Paint Pot is a particularly large and interesting mud pot. The mud is thick, and bubbles viscously like a 100-foot frying pan full of a somewhat over-thickened cream sauce. On one side, the mud was built up and hardened into a forest of miniature volcano cones, many of them burping out an occasional glob of mud. The sounds of the many different geothermal features are fascinating: deep rumbles and fire hose roars from the big active springs and geysers; soft plops and burbles from the mud, steam-radiator hissing from the dry fumaroles, all blending with the ubiquitous sound of many busy little streams carrying all the hot water downhill to the river. Steam vents can appear anywhere through the valley. Along the paths to the big features are myriad little springs and vents, sometimes just an almost invisible tendril of steam from a pencil-sized hole which leisurely blows one little bubble at a time. It's a bit disconcerting to see steam venting from a storm sewer in a parking lot.
6/29 Finally, a warm sunny day. Temperature about 70 - not a cloud in the sky. We celebrated by launching the canoe. The last time it was in the water was Thanksgiving, in Florida.
On the map, the islands on Jackson Lake near Colter Bay appear to be ideal canoe country, with lots of protected inlets to explore, and a spectacular close-up view of the Tetons. In practice, it was spoiled by dozens of powerboats - water skiers, jet skies, rafts of boats having loud drunken parties, speedboats roaring by at full throttle.
The mountain views were indeed spectacular - with the upper two thirds of the peaks still mostly snow covered, and the dark steep valleys in-between beckoning invitingly. And we did indeed manage to find a few protected inlets, far enough from the roar of high-powered engines so that we had a chance of hearing the birds and the mosquitoes. (There are actually a few mosquitoes here - the first we've run into in nine months or so.) It's little things that stick in our mind after this kind of outing: a Great Blue Heron standing motionless, almost-successfully pretending to be a stump as we drifted by, the effect slightly spoiled by the wind gently ruffling the fluffy white chest feathers (how many others were fully successful?); another heron taking off and veering directly over us as it departed, the soft "flup, flup" of the huge wings audible only while it is very close; an occasional little "plop" from a frog, interrupting his sun bathing while we pass (we never did actually see frogs - just the spreading ripples where they disappeared); the twisted and bleached remains of large pines, perhaps fallen long before we were born, rocks still captured between sky-pointing roots; a huge White Pelican, gliding slowly through acres of yellow water lilies; a large, conspicuously patterned hawk (Osprey?) drifting silently overhead; a group of about 10 White Pelicans repetitively circling overhead, slowly descending, then veering off to seek a less populated cove; a woodpecker screeching in the distance, followed by the cackle of a flicker somewhere closer; the twitters of many different small birds, mostly invisible in the underbrush; and always, those steep jagged rock spires of the Tetons, jutting up from the other shore of the lake, huge expanses of deep uninterrupted snow glowing in the shadowed recesses; (we check the map and pick out the one snow field that actually is a glacier).
Now that the weather has changed, we've decided to stay here another five days. I checked the reservations desk this morning, and, unbelievably, was able to extend our stay through the night of July 4. We had expected that the weekend of the 4th would have been booked solid months in advance and that we would have to go hunt up a boondocking site in one of the national forests for that weekend.
7/1 In the past two days, we've put a lot of miles on the truck, doing the big loops through the northern parts of the park. We've also put quite a few miles on our feet, usually in short segments, stopping at every pullout and walking to all the local features - many more geothermal features, to the point that they are starting to blur together in our memory. The Mammoth Hot Springs area stands out. Here, the mineral deposits are limestone (travertine), and are being deposited remarkably rapidly - up to a foot a year - so the landscape is constantly changing
One somewhat longer hike that we recommend is the Clear Lake Trail, heading east from the beginning of the Artist Point road. This trail, in just a few miles, has a little bit of everything: two lovely little lakes, mature forest, a little area of mud pots, hot springs and steam vents, and a branch trail to Point Sublime, a less traveled portion of the east rim of "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone". It's nice to come upon a geothermal areas back in the woods, unencumbered with fences and warning signs, so we can walk right up and stare down into the maw of the dragon (with appropriate consideration for preservation and protection of the geological features, but able to make our own tradeoffs of safety vs. enjoyment.)
More Elk - it was just a matter of going a little further north, and Elk herds became quite common. Finally some grizzly bears - three separate sightings, each marked by huge traffic jams. More Bison and Moose - everywhere we look. Yellowstone is advertised for its unique geology, but the concentration of large mammals is amazing. This park seems to have a much greater concentration and variety of large mammals than any other area in the lower 48.
The weather has been lovely - perfect mid-70's hiking temperatures, mostly clear skies. We've been narrowly missed by several summer thunderstorms. It's fun to watch these massive black clouds drift by, flashing and banging furiously for a few minutes then disappearing. The muddy trails are less fun - this region has had a great deal more rain than usual, and the rivers are all running furiously. Several major river systems flow from here, and it can get very confusing, since they all run off in different directions. Where else could one find big high-volume rivers running North, South, and West all within 50 miles of each other?
7/2 Jack and Margaret Apoka are Internet acquaintances, via the RV-Talk Email list. They were kind enough to answer, via Email, our queries about road conditions in the Yellowstone area, and then to invite us to stop by while we were in the area. Margaret is working at a tourist lodge just east of Grand Teton. This is their second summer at this lodge. Their travel trailer is parked behind the tourist cabins facing west down the valley with a wonderful view of the Tetons. They have horses leased for the summer and pastured near by. The horse pasture backs up to National Forest lands, which are laced with horse trails and logging roads. They mentioned that there are often Elk herds visible on the hills just behind their trailer. The buildings where they work are nearly new log cabins, built entirely by the owner and his friends. The logs are massive lodgepole pine, collected in the nearby hills from fire-killed trees. The craftsmanship was impeccable, and the clubhouse/lounge where we had a pleasant visit with the Apokas was a very pleasant place. Nice Life!
7/3 The forest roads just east of Grant Teton National Park wind through low mountains, then down through the valleys in between. On the peaks, we had long views out across Jackson Hole to the Tetons as the sun set. Occasional ponds were dotted with water lilies, and had flocks of Canada Geese along the shores. Beaver dams, with lodges jutting out of the water behind them, turned tiny streams into sizeable ponds. Once, when looking out across a valley, we saw a coyote loping through a field of sagebrush.
7/4 We took a ferry across Jenny Lake to a trailhead at the foot of the Tetons, then hiked to Hidden Falls and on to Inspiration Point. The Falls, and the stream below, are very impressive - still overflowing with melt water from the deep snows above. Inspiration Point has an unobstructed view North, East, and South across the entire Jackson Hole valley to the eastern mountains.
The return trail, following the shore of Jenny Lake around its South end, was lovely. At one point, we were walking through a little meadow covered almost solidly with large Columbine flowers, in delicate shades of pale yellow and blue, pure white, and mixtures of these. Further along the trail we started seeing Clematis vines in bloom, their neat purple flowers barely peeping out over the top of the bushes through which the vines climbed. Both Solomon's Seal and a tall showy variety of False Solomon's Seal were common. The lupines are just now coming into full bloom, and some meadows are covered densely with them. It's amazing how many of these wild flowers we recognize immediately because of their similarity to domesticated flowers which we used to grow in our home garden.
Tomorrow, we're moving on. The RC Club get-together in Kamiah, ID starts on the 7th, and it's at least a two-day drive to get there.