Yellowstone and Geezer VII - Jackson Lake Lodge to Flaming Gorge, UT

October 3

I surprised myself this morning and got up early to catch the sunrise on the Tetons.  As many of you know, I am not an early riser, but it was worth it as the sunrise was beautiful.  It was below 30 degrees outside, but I bundled up and. except for my hands, I stayed comfortable.

After the sunrise, we went over to the main lodge to check out and have some juice and pastries for breakfast before hitting the road.  It was clear today for a change, but pretty cold as it was only 31 when we left.  Today we are driving south to the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area that straddles the Wyoming/Utah border.  We are staying two nights at the Red Canyon Lodge, which is at the south end of Flaming Gorge .

We started our drive south taking the Teton Park Road instead of the main highway and had beautiful views of the Tetons and Jackson and Jenny Lake.

Jackson Lake

 

Jenny Lake

After leaving the Park and driving through Jackson we turned southeast on US Hwy 191 and drove through some very scenic canyon areas.  As we came out of the mountain we came into the flat, desolate area of Wyoming where there doesn’t seem to be much of anything including people.  We continued following 191 into Rock Springs where we picked up I-80 for a couple of miles before turning south again to 191.  South of I-80 the terrain became interesting again as we entered the Flaming Gorge area.  We couldn’t see the lake, but the land was full of canyons and very rugged terrain, but very arid.

As we crossed into Utah and turned west the area became more forested and mountain like.  By late afternoon we reached the Red Canyon Lodge, which is fairly remote and sits near a lake.  It is also near the Flaming Gorge Visitors Center so before we checked in we drove on to the Visitors Center to see if we could get some information for our explorations tomorrow.  Unfortunately it was only open on weekends this time of the year so we’ll have to wait for tomorrow.  On the way back to the Lodge we were surprised to see big horn sheep grazing in the forest.  There were mostly young ones and they were very skittish so we couldn’t get too close, but it was pretty exciting just to see them.

We checked-in and got settled in our cabin, which turned out to be pretty nice, especially compared to the cabin we had in Silver Gate.  After resting for a while we walked around and explored the area then had dinner in the lodge restaurant.  After dinner we decided to drive back out towards the Visitors Center and see if we could spot anymore wildlife, but didn’t have any luck except for getting a fleeting look at the big horn sheep again as they ran away from the road.  We returned to the lodge and spent the rest of the evening reading and looking at our day’s pictures.  I was pretty tired after my early wake-up time this morning so it was an early evening for me.

Val and I at our cabin at Red Canyon Lodge/

There was a small lake across from our cabin.