I’m back to share more from our honeymoon – our trip to Grand Teton National Park! You can read our full itinerary here and Part 1 (our trip to Jackson Hole) here.
We spent about 2 days in Grand Teton National Park. The south entrance of the park is only about a half an hour drive from Jackson. And the north entrance leads right to Yellowstone. We didn’t stay inside the park so we visited the south during our last day staying in Jackson. And then made the rest of our stops driving through as we headed towards Yellowstone. Even though this park is so close to Yellowstone, its amazing how different they are.
Jenny Lake
I got a little nervous when we first pulled into the parking lot, because it was crowded. But, thankfully we got there in the afternoon and people were starting to leave. One good thing about the most popular spots is that they’re not all day activities. It‘s not like brunch where people will sit and drink til its over. People will come, see the sights, maybe take a little hike and then leave. And Grand Teton National Park is a lot less crowded than Yellowstone.
Our first stop was the ranger station. She gave us tips about our bear spray and taught us how to use it (but only if we really needed to). And then explained how to get to the boat dock.
We took the boat across Jenny Lake. You can walk around it for either a 2 or 5 mile hike, depending which way you go. And you get dropped off at the base of the hiking trails to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. We kept taking pictures on the way up thinking that each spot was as pretty as it was going to get until we actually got to the top of Hidden Falls.
Jacket / Pants / Sneakers / Tank / Pullover / Backpack
Once you get to Hidden Falls, Inspiration Point is only about another .3 miles. When we first started our hike, we could see people that looked super high up and far away. We later realized we were in that same spot going up to Inspiration Point. This entire hike took us a couple hours. We took our time – we were worried about the change in elevation and kept stopping along the way to take pictures.
Mormon Row
We hit the rest of our stops in Grand Tetons as we drove through on our way to Yellowstone. The park is north of where we were staying, so even though it turned a 3 hour drive into an all day thing, we were able to enjoy our drive with lots of adventures along the way. We did not want to miss out on any sightseeing opportunities. Our first stop was Mormon Row. It’s a great place to stop for beautiful pictures of the barns in front of the mountains. (How many mountain pictures is too many? The limit does not exist). And learn a little bit of history of the western settlers. Unlike many early settlers, the Mormons found comfort in community and worked together to build barns and raise their children.
Oxbow Bend
The roads have a bunch of “pull outs” and most of them are the best spots for Kodak moments. I had oxbow bend on my list for Grand Tetons not realizing it was just a pullout, but I’m glad we stopped. Such beautiful views (and people say it’s a great place to catch some wildlife, even though we didn’t see any here).
Jackson Lake Lodge
This is one of the most popular places to stay inside GTNP but it’s also a great place to stop even if you’re not staying there. We came here for lunch – there’s a couple restaurants ranging from a coffee stand, a bar, a diner and a nicer restaurant. We sat at one of the counters at the diner and then went over to the bar to get a little s’mores cheesecake to share. Perfect opportunity to sit next to the huge windows overlooking the Teton mountains. There’s a big cozy sitting area either facing the mountains or by a fireplace. And the outside deck is the best view of all of the mountains. Mount Moran (the biggest) is in the middle and I found Mount Teewinot, which is the one we climbed near Jenny Lake the day before.
The original plan was to make a stop at Colter Bay, but by the time we got there we were ready to speed up our drive and get to our destination. We continued our drive north through the park and we pretty quickly reached the south entrance to Yellowstone.
Read more about our trip:
