A few months back Karen and I took a trip to Jackson Wyoming where we got to visit the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. A little time has passed and I’ve had time to go through the holidays and also the pictures and put together a little video. Hope you enjoy a virtual trip to Wyoming…
Tag: Mormon Barn
The Wyoming Adventure Day 6
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…
The Wyoming Adventure Day 2
Today started out simple enough. We drove out to get some morning shots of the Grand Teton peak. We stopped by the Church of the Transfiguration which is in the part and is ran by the local Episcopal Church, but they were having services so we couldn’t photograph inside and decided we would return later for that, but I did get a nice shot of the peak. Good thing too because it was to be about the last we saw of any blue in the sky. It appears that the rain followed us from Texas all the way up here.
As we were leaving the area we noticed a lot of people standing on a bridge, where it says “No stopping or standing anytime”. Well, of course we had to get out and see what was going on like everyone else. There were a couple of moose down by the river and everyone was shooting away with their cameras. This was cool because moose was one of the animals that we were wanting to see while we were up here.
Next we swung by an what remains of the cabin that was used in the 50’s western Shane. My dad is a big fan of that movie so I thought I’d get some pictures of it for him. As you can see, By this time the rain was moving into the area and the mountains were becoming clouded in haze. The only thing missing was a little kid running to the corner of the cabin yelling “Come back Shane!”. Well, that and the roof. {edit 9/26/09: Just rented and watched the movie Shane and it was clear to me that this is NOT the cabin that Shane was staying in. This was in fact in the movie, but it was a homestead of one of the other farmers. Still a historic movie location.}
Next stop… The most photographed barn in America. I think that is actually it’s official name at this point. 🙂 This is an old barn that was built by the Mormon settlers in the area back in the late 1800s. Seems that every photo-buff that comes to the area gets a shot of this one so I didn’t want to be left out. Of course I at least tried to make it a little different than the other shots I had seen. Low and wide was my plan.
And then after dinner, we watched the sun set behind Mount Moran (and the clouds). Not a very spectacular sunset but once it was down I took the opportunity to capture this long (15 second) exposure.
Tomorrow, more dogging rain and taking pictures. As it stands right now, Thursday is the only day this week without some sort of rain activity mentioned in the forcast. Maybe I’ll get some cool storm shots to share. 🙂 There’s always a bright side.