Checking Out the Haze

We had a chance - before starting work at 3 PM yesterday - to take a short drive to the edge of the Teton National Park to check out the haze for ourselves. The word from folks coming into the lodge was that you could barely see the mountains through the smoke and haze. It has been pretty bad for the last week or so and the reports were accurate. Below, in the first shot, the mountains should be sharp and majestic sitting in the background of the welcome sign:

These are photos taken from the road as we traveled north through the park:

Contrast these with a photo we took during one of our earlier trips to the park:

We are fortunate to have taken so many photos of these mountains when they were covered in snow and there were no fires to cloud the images.

Our next to the last week ended yesterday and we are looking forward to our last trip to Yellowstone for this year. Our plan is to leave by 9 AM this morning and take the Idaho route north to the west entrance of the park. We hope the air is clear on this route and we will be able to get some nice pictures of the fall colors along with some nice scenery...