August 17

Hits and misses today.  

Left Yellowstone early at 7 am and 45 degrees cool.  Finally saw two elk and another really pretty fall area.

Tetons! Gorgeous mountains!  Very craggy and sharply chiseled.  Snow on the top with reflections in Jackson lake.  Beautiful drive.  Small national park with not nearly the services of Yellowstone.  Great place if that is your destination, I'm sure.  And if you love hiking and biking, you would love a few days there.

We have decided that if you are on a long trip to see major parks and sights, you don't need as many days in each spot to see it.  On the other hand, if you are just meandering and kicking back there are some areas that would be wonderful for just relaxing a while.  We had planned to spend a couple nights in the Teton area but decided to move on as there is not much more to see than the mountains and the darling town of Jackson (and I'm not a shopper). We decided that if we drove on to Provo and spent one night there it would open up the time to spend two nights at Bryce Canyon before heading to Zion for our originally scheduled two nights.

So the drive.....very long!  What we like to call an "ass whoopin".  But the scenery...priceless!  Drove along the Snake river.  Such a nice drive and stopped to make our lunch alongside the Palisades reservoir.  Huge lake formed by damming the Snake river.  The lake is down quite a lot but there were numerous camping parks full of campers, boaters and fishermen.  

We had never been in Idaho so that was another first. Lots of pretty farming country ...  potatoes? Interesting terrain in each part of the country we have seen.  Rocky Mountains, rolling mountains, soil covered mountains, tree covered mountains, beautiful lakes, streams, falls, meadows and prairies.  

We stayed at the Utah Lake state park last night, right on the lake.  Too tired to care though.  Lol!