Another day full of driving! We left our little motel in Dinosaur and crossed into Utah. Much of Utah is flat and desolate, but eastern Utah and the canyonlands in the south are amazing (unfortunately we won’t make it down to the canyons on this trip, but we might be able to go into Arches briefly). The antistrata show off all the layers of history, which I don’t yet know enough about, but I’m slowly accumulating some knowledge of geology through the internet (when I take the time to look into various structures, like that time I read a journal article on columnar basalt).

Robert missed most of Blue Mountain since he just had to read the latest political news. I believe it’s the responsibility of the passenger to look around and make sure to see all the things that the driver can’t really look at without crashing the car. As kids, my siblings and I were strongly encouraged to look around at the world while in the car instead of reading or playing on handheld game systems. Unsurprisingly, this has become a habit, and while I would like to read all the books in my reading list, I find myself looking out the window most of the time that I am riding in the passenger seat.

 

Anyways, driving through the northeast corner of Utah was fun. Like I said, lots of cool gulches and geology. Flaming gorge was pretty, although we only saw a small portion of it, and not even the area with the most potential for gorgeous gorge views. We went past a place called the Firehole and I drove right past the only overlook. The brief look we got was amazing. This valley spotted with bushes, trees, cloud shadows, and more antistrata, it was the arid valley of my dreams. It was perfect. (I was driving, so I don’t have pictures for any of this.)

(This is where I would have put a picture of the Firehole if I had bothered to stop and get a picture, curses!)

Wyoming was pretty, until we got into Jackson Hole, and then it was stunning. The Grand Tetons are amazing.

Formed by uplift at the Teton fault followed by glaciation, they are giant rocky peaks rising from an unassuming and relatively flat valley floor. As you move north, the view of them changes, revealing more jagged peaks and canyons that go up between them full of glaciers and boulder fields. Just so awesome!

We somehow lucked out and got there just in time to get one of the last campsites at the Jenny Lake campground, which usually fills up in the morning (we arrived around 5:30 PM). Yay for getting there on Labor day when everyone is leaving! We also picked up some bear spray since bears are active in at least Grand Teton, Glacier, and North Cascades National Parks. We heard that some guy thought it was bug spray and sprayed it on himself and his kids…

Our campsite was nice and close to the lake, just a couple minutes walk to the edge of Jenny Lake and spectacular views.

 

Temperatures dropped pretty low once the sun went down and we eventually just had to put out our tiny fire and get into the sleeping bags. I was more than happy to do so, I was so tired after another long day of driving.