We went out for a drive today in Grand Teton National Park and saw a young adult grizzly bear wandering through the bushes. Bear sightings are uncommon in the Tetons.
Yesterday while out for another drive we had to wait several minutes while an entire herd of bison crossed the highway, probably over 200 animals of all ages. That experience was a real throwback to the early days of the West when trains would have to stop and wait for vast bison herds to cross the tracks.
Photos of both these sightings (bear and bison) can be found on the other DrC's blog: cruztalking.blogspot.com. She is the real photographer in the family.
During this sojourn in the two national parks - Yellowstone and Grand Teton - we have seen the "big five" that you have some chance of seeing: bear, moose, elk, bison, and deer. Also this week we've seen coyote and pronghorn antelope. Earlier in the summer we spotted bighorn sheep and beaver.
There are big cats in these mountains - puma, lynx, bobcat - but seeing one is exceedingly rare. The big cats don't want to be seen and generally manage to be invisible, even if you are nearby. Wolves are here in some quantity, but are hard to spot unless you have luck.
You'd probably gather from the above that we come here primarily to view the critters, and you'd be wrong. What mostly brings us back here decade after decade is the mountain scenery - we love it. The critters are a fun bonus, but we sometimes don't see anything but the craggy mountains, the forests, the streams and the lakes, and we go away happy, vowing to return.
