Barns and Animals

As mentioned in yesterday's entry, we were picking up the rafting pictures and they are shown below - remember though, that these are pictures of pictures, but still show an example of the kind of rapids we encountered:

Josie and I are in the back of the boat, just in front of the guide. I am wearing the blue hat, sitting on the outside, and Josie is wearing the sunglasses, sitting next to me. It was a wild ride and lots of fun.

The entry was late yesterday as a result of our early trip to get better shots of the barn that is so popular in Jackson Hole photos. Below are shots of two of these barns. The first is the most popular, and the second is also popular and about 1/2 mile away from the 1st one:

Just about all of the articles on the Grand Tetons has one or the other of these barns. Of course, our shots were taken with a point-and-shoot camera, and not a $2,000+ SLR camera. They aren't too bad though. This area is known as Mormon Row, which was an area of Mormon Homesteads in the early 1900's.

We saw lots of wildlife while on this trip. Starting with the prairie dogs that were all over the properties of these barns:

The bison were also all over this area and we took tons of pictures, but four of the best are below:

The road that we were on was east of the main road through the National Park and therefore, not traveled as much. That is probably why there was so much wildlife in this area. We then came across these elk - all cows - that were just curious about us:

Our final stop was at the Visitor Center that we had not yet visited and were pleasantly surprised at that facility which is just on the edge of town as you drive in from the north out of the National Park. Among all of the other beautiful displays and other offerings in this Center, was this display of elk to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Elk Refuge which is in town:

Our days off this week were wonderful and we are getting more and more attracted to this area. Today is an early start at work - 7 AM - so it's time to get rolling...