Jackson To Yellowstone, Missoula, Lochsa, And Beyond

The next couple weeks saw us driving up through the left side of Yellowstone, into Montana, and eventually our former home in Missoula, where we spent a week with Kim and Dave (last pictured with us a year ago in London), visiting with them and other friends and making a variety of changes and refinements to the camper. After that, we drove the Lochsa River, another favorite, eating at the Lochsa Lodge and staying at the Powell campground, and from there took US route 95 through northern Idaho and crossed over into Canada.

A small stack of firewood in Jackson or Grand Teton
NP will set you back $14.99; evidently cut from a special
grove of billion-dollar trees

Jackson has changed so much in the 54 years we've been
visiting it; here, beef aging in the Albertson's, reminiscent of
La Grande Epicerie de Paris

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chaose

X-rated items in the local drug store; curtained, at
least, unlike Walmart

Another sign you're out west

"Oh no...another squirrel-sighting!"...en route from Jackson, Gros Ventre,
to Colter Bay

But there were several hundred of the critters

And a serious traffic jam

Moving right along, we are now in Yellowstone NP, which we really
like in the winter

Approaching the West Yellowstone entrance to Yellowstone NP

Four lanes of traffic, backed up all the way into town: why we like
YNP mostly in the winter

We were busy at Kim and Dave's and didn't take many
pix: here, 3 fauns are resting after brunching on Kim's
flowers

Hector Protector at a Missoula Walmart

At Lochsa Lodge

On the Lochsa, which we rafter with Rebecca and Rachel in 1996

Camping at Powell

The drive down the river was all rain and clouds, but still enjoyable;
one of our favorite drives

Bird city in darkest Idaho

In our travels we have seen boot fences and bra fences and toilet walls, but this
is our our first bird-house fence

Parting thought from Idaho

Teton Scenes

From 1970 on, the Tetons have been one of our happy places, and we spent nearly a week there in later July, the best part being able to stay most of that time at the Jenny Lake campground...something we'd not been able to do since the mid-70s, when a storm and slide destroyed much of it. The campground was subsequently rebuilt but has not permitted anything but small vehicles and tent camping since then. Our new mini-van rig allowed us in. The blog probably contains hundreds of pix from the Tetons, both pre- and post-retirement for us (just enter "Tetons" in the search box), but we can't resist adding a few more.

The Grand, Gunsight Notch, Mt. Owen...the perennial snowfields
still perennial, Teton Glacier still there

Something new to us...OTC oxygen...seemed maybe to help me... 

Also new to us: rental bear spray from a vending
machine

Among the wildflowers

Enjoying ice cream at the Jenny Lake visitor area

Helpful model...

Looking across Jenny Lake to Symmetry Spire and Mt. St. John,
both of which I climbed in 70s

The view from our campsite at Jenny Lake

Also from our campsite, Teewinot, most of which we climbed together
in 1972; and which I soloed a few years later

Mt. St. John's, Rockchuck Peak...

Indian Paintbrush

On an excursion out to the Lupine Meadows parking lot, looking
for the unmarked trail that begins the climb of Teewinot

In 1972, we got about as far as the high notch, but then turned back...
all recounted here

On the trail to Teewinot, 2025

The crowds in the Tetons were pretty overwhelming; here,
people are parked along the highway half a mile either side of
the entrance to the Jenny Lake parking lots, which fill early
in the morning; same thing at various day-hike lots; Lake
Solitude has been renamed Lake Multitude

Campsite visitor

Nearly every day rangers or wildlife management people stopped by

to tell us there was a bear in some campsite or other; but we never saw one

Cathedral Group

Cabins at Jenny Lake Lodge were $1102 per night--still out of our
price range

But we though we'd have lunch there anyway; undistinguished
and disappointing...

But we did finally get to camp again at Jenny Lake

West To Wyoming

The thousand or so miles of corn and beans between Chicago and western Wyoming looked great, especially as we neared some of our old stomping grounds, way out West. We enjoy scenic driving, but this was also nostalgic driving, revisiting favorite and storied places. All this in mid-July.

Weirdest truck-stop cacophony ever...a large truck filled with chicks,
thousands of them, tweeting away over the din of the 18-wheelers

Interesting rocks in far western Nebraska

At the Walmart by the U of Wyoming

We got stuck once, probably 1972, trying to get to the Winds (Wind

River Mountain range in Wyoming) on the Muddy Speedway

Gateway, miles down a very rough road, to the southern bit of the 

Winds, the Cirque of Towers, Warbonnet Peak, where we had some

good times

Winds in the background, Cirque of Towers in there somewhere

New-fangled critter crossings that weren't there in the 70s;
varmintalism...

On the gravel road to the Green River Lakes, in the Winds; and the cut-off
to Union Pass...in the winter, snowmobiling, we'd often be on it to get back
to the motel near Union Pass; had an interesting mishap and dig-out there
once....

Upper (Lower?) Green River Lake, with Squaretop in the background

The plan, in 1995, was for me to climb Squaretop, but the
melt stranded us on the wrong side of the flooded river, with
1400 calories between us...and an apparently territorial bull
moose who persuaded us to try a river crossing...the full story
is here; spoiler alert: Vicki survived

Way downstream, the Green, major tributary of the Colorado

Not so nasty in high summer

Good fishin'

Beetle-kill, doing a number here as elsewhere in the forests of the
West and Northwest