You said you wanted the Tetons. Here's what I've built. There's one decision left, and it's yours.
We leave Wednesday after work, sleep in Salt Lake, and cross into Wyoming Thursday. Camp is at Flagg Ranch — the far north end of the park, two miles from Yellowstone's south gate.
The moon is new on the eleventh. No moonlight the entire time we're there, which means the Milky Way comes up over the range. Thursday night we sit out with a blanket and watch it.
Drive to Salt LakeOut at 5:30, easy dinner, early night
North to campThrough Jackson, up the length of the park, set up by mid-afternoon
Delta LakeThe hard one. All day.
Your choice, then dinnerSee below. Table at 7:15 either way.
Sunrise, then the long way homeOxbow Bend at dawn, hot springs on the drive south
Bear Lake to homeSlow morning, back by evening
Nine miles and 2,400 feet of climbing. The last stretch isn't a maintained trail — we leave the main path at an unmarked junction and scramble a boulder field to get up there.
That color is real. It's rock ground to powder by the Teton Glacier and suspended in the meltwater.
If it's more than we want that morning, the maintained trail keeps going to Amphitheater Lake instead — no scrambling, still beautiful. We can decide at the junction.
All three of these are good. I've gone back and forth and I'd rather you pick.
A boat across the lake, then Hidden Falls, then a climb to Inspiration Point looking back over the whole valley. From there we walk up Cascade Canyon as far as we feel like — walls a thousand feet high on both sides, a creek beside the trail, moose in the willows.
This is the classic Teton day. Gentler than Friday, and we turn around whenever we want.
We're camped closer to Old Faithful than to the town of Jackson. West Thumb first, where hot springs spill into the shore of Yellowstone Lake and the whole basin steams in the cold. Then Old Faithful, then Grand Prismatic — the biggest hot spring in the country, with a short walk up to the overlook where you can actually see the colors.
Nothing in the Tetons looks remotely like this.
West Thumb first thing, while it's steaming and empty. Then back through camp and south to Jenny Lake by mid-morning for Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. We skip Old Faithful, which is the part that eats the whole day.
Saturday night is dinner at the Mural Room at Jackson Lake Lodge, about thirty minutes from camp. Sixty-foot windows facing the range. We get there early and have a drink at the windows while the light goes.
Sunday at dawn we're here. Mount Moran on still water, and the elk have started to rut — we'll hear bulls bugling across the flats in the dark before the sun comes up.
Then we drive home the long way. Signal Mountain, the old barns at Mormon Row, and ten miles up a gravel road off Hoback Canyon to Granite Hot Springs.
That pool was built by hand in 1933 and sits in a meadow ringed by peaks. Two days after Delta Lake, that's the right order of operations.
Bring a warm hat. It'll be in the low thirties every morning and the mid-sixties by lunch.
Everything is booked or handled. Camp is reserved, the table is reserved, the gear is sorted — and you made the call.
Saturday: A. Jenny Lake, the boat, and Cascade Canyon.
Next: come fly the whole thing →the trip in 3D — press “Fly the trip” and just watch