On Wednesday, Aug. 21st we drove to three of the state parks in southern Idaho. Big Springs State park was quiet and appeared to be a haven for four-wheelers mostly, with some nice looking campgrounds, but little else.
The second state park we explored was Harriman State Park which again was mostly a campground, but with a classy fishing spot on the Henrys Fork of the Snake River and a boat launch too.
Then we drove several miles further to Upper Mesa Falls, in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest near Aston, Idaho where we found a very nice park with great walkways to the waterfall the park is named after. This is on the Henrys Fork of the Snake River, a 200 feet wide waterfall descends 114 feet through a narrow and very steep canyon. This thunderous waterfall is as tall as a ten-story building and is one of the last undisturbed waterfalls of consequence in the western U.S. (there is no hydro-electric power plant attached to it, like nearly all other waterfalls in the West).
On Thursday, Aug. 22, we drove back over Teton Pass to Jackson, WY. From Jackson, we drove partway up the opposite side of the Teton Valley from the Teton range, up a very steep and bumpy road to Curtis Canyon.
As we cam back down off the mountain we found another pronghorn antelope in the field below the mountain.
In the afternoon we took a nice hike on the other side of Jackson at the Cache Creek Recreation area, a well-maintained city park. I met some new people and made some canine friends too.
On Friday, Aug. 23rd, we drove over Teton Pass again to Granite Falls, near Pinedale, WY. This required us to drive over eight miles up a very bumpy and narrow dirt road to see the waterfall.
On the way back home we stopped at the South Park Wildlife ManagementArea, a very nice 1,300-acre preserve outside of Jackson, WY. As you see below we found Trumpeter Swans there and a nice hiking trail to walk on.
Tomorrow we will be returning to the Grand Teton National Park for a final trip before we move on to Yellowstone National Park😊.
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