Episode 42 | Livingston, MT to Grand Teton National Park, WY
I am not a morning person. I want to be clear about that up front. But there is something about traveling west that tricks your body into behaving like one. Five in the morning feels like seven back home in Florida, and somehow that makes it acceptable to be standing outside in the dark with a camera pointed at the stars.
That’s exactly what I did on our last morning at Under Canvas.
After the storm rolled through the night before, the sky cleared out and left behind the kind of stillness that makes you want to stay very quiet and not ruin it. I photographed stars from the porch, then went back inside and lit a fire in the wood-burning stove, then went back out when the sky started doing something worth pointing a camera at. By the time the fog settled into the valley and the sun began grazing the tops of the peaks, I had already forgotten that I don’t like mornings.
Coffee in hand, watching the fog burn off over the Absarokas. There are worse ways to start a day.
Through the North Gate and into Yellowstone
We loaded up, texted the golf cart guy to come collect our bags, said goodbye to Tent 30, and headed south through a little town called Gardiner, which sits right at the north entrance to Yellowstone.
The plan was simple: take a leisurely drive through the park, hug the east side of what is essentially a giant figure eight of roads, pass Lake Yellowstone, and work our way down through the south end into Grand Teton National Park. Our daughter was flying in from New York and meeting us in Jackson in a day and a half, so we had time. No rush.
Before we left I made my predictions for wildlife sightings. Specifically, a bear. Denise was less optimistic. She predicted elk. Then deer. Then rabbit. Then, with a shrug, a bird.
We saw a coyote. I’ll take it.
We did stop for lunch at some random pullout on the east side of the park, which is honestly the correct way to do Yellowstone if you can manage it. Get a cooler at Walmart when you land, stock it up, and you have a picnic anywhere the view tells you to stop. That’s the tip. Write it down.
Hayden Valley was next, which is supposed to be prime bison territory. People behind us on the road said they’d seen hundreds of them earlier that morning. We got there at midday, which is not exactly prime wildlife hour, but the valley is so wide and open and quietly dramatic that it almost doesn’t matter what’s moving through it.
I mentioned to Denise that it would have been something if a bear had wandered up the path right then, while we were eating lunch. She said she’d get in the car. I asked about the food. She said she’d let him have it. Reasonable policy.
Colter Bay Village, Grand Teton National Park
We arrived at Colter Bay Village as the afternoon light was shifting toward something worth paying attention to. The cabins are rustic in the proper sense of the word, not the “rustic chic” sense you see on home renovation shows. Wood walls, simple beds, practical. The woman at check-in mentioned, almost as an aside, that they occasionally find small critters in the rooms. Mice, she meant. And also, she added, a bear had been spotted recently near the property. She suggested we keep our bear spray handy.
At this point the bear spray had become a recurring character on this trip.
What we did find, almost immediately after checking in, was a photography tip I’ll pass along freely. Walk down to the Colter Bay Marina and take the path that runs out toward the small peninsula on the right side. At sunset, the light comes in from the right and grazes across the Grand Tetons in a way that will make you stand there longer than you planned. At sunrise it comes from the left, and I’d imagine it’s equally worth losing sleep over. We were down there without bear spray, which in hindsight was not the smartest call, but the light on those mountains was doing what Montana and Wyoming light does, which is make you forget about practical considerations entirely.
We closed out the evening with a Ranger talk near the lodge. A good way to end a long travel day. Informative, grounding, a reminder that you’re a guest in a place that operates on its own terms.
One more thing before I close this one out. It was Denise’s birthday. Her 60th. Same milestone I’ve been chasing all year across all 50 states. She spent it driving through Yellowstone, eating a roadside lunch, and watching the Grand Tetons catch the last light of the day.
Not a bad way to turn 60. Not a bad way at all.
