On Friday we drove to Rexburg, Idaho, to have dinner with Kali, who started her college career at BYU Idaho a couple weeks ago. While we waited for her to get out of classes, we drove to Mesa Falls, which are two beautiful water falls near Ashton, Idaho, in Targhee National Forest. Ashton was right in the middle of its spud harvest. Those are spuds filling the truck, and loaded trucks like this one were driving down this road almost constantly.
Here's a truck being loaded with potatoes.
This is the brink of the Upper Mesa Falls, which cascade over volcanic ash that turned to rock after the Yellowstone Caldera last erupted 640,000 years ago (6,500 times more powerful than Mt.St. Helens).
Here's Chieko in front of the Upper Falls.
Here's the Upper Mesa Falls.
This is the Henry's Fork River below the Upper Mesa Falls. Henry's Fork is a tributary to the Snake River.
These are the Lower Mesa Falls, about a mile below the Upper Falls. These falls are the last waterfalls on the Snake River system that are not altered by humans.
It's autumn, and all the flowers have gone to seed.
We went to a Mexican hole-in-tbe-wall restaurant with Kali. Then she took us on a tour of the BYU Idaho campus. The campus has a beautiful romantic garden area with a gazebo and a bunch of other small gardens within the garden.
This is in front of a fountain.
Me with Kali.
Driving from Rexburg to Alpine, Wyoming, there were a lot of hay fields that have been harvested.
This is along the huge Palisades reservoir. The fall colors were really pretty, but Saturday was a rainy, sunless day, so the colors aren't very brilliant.
Here's Chieko promoting the Lexus car brand. Not really. This is just a stop along the reservoir.
I thought this lone red tree among the yellows and greens was interesting.
The clouds were hanging low on the mountainsides.
And there was snow not too far above us.
I don't have any pictures of the Bar J Wranglers on Saturday night, because I've taken and posted several pictures in previous years. However, I should note that Jennifer (my niece), convinced my 93-year-old-dad to go to the show. He used to enjoy going when my mother was alive--we celebrated both their 50th and 60th anniversaries here--and he really enjoyed being here this year. I should have taken a picture of him enjoying the chuckwagon.
On our way to the Moose-Wilson road on Sunday morning, we ended up behind a cattle drive that turned the five-minted drive into a 45-minute brake-and-idle.
We drove up to Jackson Lake Lodge via the Moose-Wilson road, Gross Ventre campground, Kelly, and Moran Junction.
We saw a cinnamon-colored black bear and her cub eating berries along the Moose-Wilson road, but my camera's battery died at just the wrong time.
We did see this moose. She popped out of the trees right where some people were standing by the road taking pictures of the yellow fall leaves. She panicked, and first ran across the road. Then she ran back and headed toward the town of Moose through a small grove of trees.
When she got to the end of the grove of trees, she turned and ran toward the road, directly at our car. I have another picture of her right in my face, but she was so close, the camera couldn't focus. Luckily she turned and ran back across the road and into the trees.
Here's the famous barn on Mormon Row. The weather on Sunday turned out to be really nice, although it was cold.
This is near Jackson Lake Lodge.
Also near Jackson Lake Lodge.
This is Jenny Lake.
We saw several pronghorns, including this lone one near Jenny Lake.
On the way home, we decided to go through Soda Springs and Lava Hot Springs rather than go over the Salt Creek Pass out of Star Valley. Originally, we were going to go this way to avoid snow on the pass, but the weather was nice, and there was no snow over the pass. However, we decided to go this way for a change, anyway, and we ended up driving through quite a bit of snow in the mountains to heading to Soda Springs. Luckily it didn't stick to the road.
