I think the most humbling moment of my vacation occurred this morning. I suppose that’s what shooting the sunrise at the Tetons next to a guy who is going to expose an 8″ x 10″ sheet of Velvia will do. Frankly, I can’t imagine having the patience to shoot on a piece of film that costs $10. And that’s after you compose upside down and reversed. Eric (the photographer from Colorado that I met yesterday showed up for sunrise and brought his camera along, (and not his Holga this time). He took two shots the entire sunrise; I must have shot 50 and I’m certain another guy down our little line shot over 200 (for some reason he was using continuous (which doesn’t make sense unless he was bracketing).

I finished up the sunrise with a trip back north, towards my campsite, hoping to spot some animals to shoot along the way. Unfortunately, I only shot a couple of bison, and I have plenty of pictures of them. Got to my campsite and took a 2 hour nap (getting up for sunrise every morning is wearing on me.

After I “checked-out” of the campsite, I hit the road south, there were still a few places I wanted to go but hadn’t made it to yet. I made the drive up Signal Mountain and wasn’t terribly impressed with what I found; that’s probably because I don’t find the geography of the rest of the park nearly as exciting as the mountains themselves.

Back down the mountain I drove, heading towards Lupine Meadows which, to my disappoint, is really just a trailhead to a few lakes. But I hit the trails anyways and was rewarded with a very photogenic squirrel shelling a nut along with an elk herd. So all wasn’t lost on that trip.

Next stop was the airport to pick up Sarah, an friend of mine who is accompanying me on the next leg of my trip (I’ll be dropping her off on my way home). My timing was impeccable, I entered the terminal just as she was coming out of the ramp. We headed into Jackson in search of somewhere to buy a couple groceries and things, thankfully we were able to track down a K-mart in the phone book (no Walmart here apparently). Then off to a western wear store where I admired Stetson hats and belt buckles. (Watch out Scott, I’m going to attempt to find a comically large belt buckle so that I can outdo you next time we see each other. Hopefully it won’t be so large that I won’t be able to sit down.)

Since she was tired from her flight and I was tired simply from traveling, we pitched our tent on some Forest Service land outside of the park around 7:30pm. A little wandering, checking out the lake we were by and now it’s time to call it a night. There’s a sunrise in the morning to shoot.

Travel Distance: 110 miles