Day 6 started out with a sunrise shot at Schwabachers Landing.  This is another one of those spots where every photographer who visits the Tetons must go to get the “classic” sunrise shot.  Since I hope to be a real photographer someday when I grow up, we woke up early and headed out.  We were not disappointed.  This morning it was me and Karen along with about 15 Asian tourists in a bus.  They were very polite and no one was jumping in front of anyone else’s shot.  It was a very pleasant experience.

Once we were done with sunrise, we had some time to kill.  We wanted to take the boat across Jenny Lake but it didn’t start running until 10am.  So, since I was in the area and it was such a clear day, we headed back to the Chapel of the Transfiguration to try the window shot once more.  At least this time you can see the mountains behind the altar.

Once outside, I realized I had yet to take a good outside shot of the chapel showing the surroundings.

We drove around a little while longer just looking to see what we could see and then headed over to Jenny Lake.  On the other side of the lake is a trail that leads up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point.  As you can tell from the name, it’s going to be another climb.  A little less than half way we came to Hidden Falls.  No where near as spectacular as the Lower Falls in Yellowstone, but very pretty coming down from the mountain.

Somewhere around the middle of the hike up to 7200 feet I began having what I thought were flashbacks to Basic Training, but then I remembered that I was in the Air Force and we didn’t do forced marches.  No, this was harder.  🙂  But we took our time and took pictures along the way.  Here is Karen standing close to the edge to get a shot of the peaks behind us.

And here is what the peaks looked like behind us.  The higher we got the more the peaks really stood out from everything else.  These really are magnificent mountains.

Once we made it to Inspiration Point the view was just gorgeous.  Suffice it to say that this picture doe not do it justice.

With our two main objectives of the day behind us we were left to wonder around.  After seeing some other pictures of the famous “barn” I came to realize that there was actually more than one of them, so we set out to find the other one.  Having found it I was a little disappointed because the pictures I had seen showed the barn with an intact fence around it and it looked very nice.  After talking to another photographer on the scene I learned that those pictures were taken many years ago.  Here is what it looks like today.  It is still very photogenic in its own right, even with the broken down fence.

We then decided to try and find some wildlife since evening was fast approaching.  We headed back to Ox Box Bend because that is supposed to be “the place” for wildlife in the evening.  Well apparently someone gave the wildlife the night off because all we really saw was this beaver.  There was a moose, but it was way off in the distance and not really visible.  I think I need that 1200mm lens that Canon only made 6 of.  Of course, then we couldn’t afford this trip, or our house, or cars, or…

And finally, with night having fallen, I noticed that the silhouette of the mountains were very majestic, so I stopped off at the Snake River Overlook for one last shot.

From there, it was dinner and bed.  Didn’t even have time to look at the pictures of the day we were so tired.  Tomorrow, we’re just hanging around Jackson and taking some local pictures of the town.

Until then…