Today’s post will be dedicated to the beautiful national park called Grand Teton. Personally, I have not heard of this park before we started planning the trip to Yellowstone National Park and realized there is another massive park right next to it. Located in Wyoming, Grand Teton is a huge park (approximately 480 sq mi or 1,300 sq km) and features major peaks of the 40-mile-long Teton Range, diverse wildlife and many campgrounds to spend the night in the park. One nice thing about Grand Teton is that most of the places are easily accessible with the car. You can use the loop that will take you around the park from which you would be able to visit most of the touristy places. If you are into hiking, you can also drop off your car in the parking lots and go on foot from there. Luckily for outdoor lovers, there are multiple paths that one can take in exploring the park!

What I liked about Grand Teton is that there are multiple trails which are clearly marked and vary in difficulty. If you are in terrible shape (like me), then you can do some of the easier hikes and still get to see some of the beautiful sights that the park has to offer. I use the words “easier hikes” rather loosely here as these were still couple of miles roundtrip and caused me to be out of breath relatively quickly. You do have to be careful on these hikes as there is plenty of wildlife in the park including bears. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we did not see any bears during our trip to Grand Teton but they are not a rare sight in the park according to the rangers. We did, however, see some wild deer and other smaller wildlife like chipmunks roaming around the forest.

When we got to the Grand Teton we did not really have an itinerary planned out as we did we Yellowstone. We figured we would just drive around and stop at the places we found interesting. If you are not planning on doing hardcore hiking, I would recommend a similar approach. Like i said before, everything in the park is located along the highway loop, so you can just take exits and make stops as you see something interesting. We did just that and found some really cool spots like a horse ranch, a creek with a beautiful view of the mountain range, and other cool looking spots. Regarding the hikes, we stopped by the Taggart Lake and Jenny Lake and walked around the area. Taggart Lake has a parking relatively close to the lake and there are a couple of different trails you can take to the two different lakes. Jenny Lake is a much larger lake and there is a visitor center right next to it. The lake is very easily accessible there so you don’t have to hike anywhere to enjoy the view. I would recommend grabbing your lunch to go and enjoying it on the lake! We did also visit the Mormon Row which is supposed to be a historic landmark but we did not really figure out why it was such a big deal… 

We were staying in the city called Jackson not far from the Grand Teton National Park while on our trip. I would highly recommend for anyone visiting the park to stay there as the city itself is pretty cool with a lot of coffee shops and bars to visit in the evenings. The one night we were there, we visited a wild game restaurant called "Gun Barrel" and had an amazing dinner of elk chops and bison steaks with some locally brewed beer. It was a perfect way to end the day full of hiking and sightseeing! Also, Jackson is a very popular tourist destination in the winter time as there are some high end ski resorts right next to the city. So if you are a skiing enthusiast, you should check out the slopes although I have a feeling it will be a very expensive trip!