Grand Teton National Park - Cascades Canyon Trail and Jenny Lake Campground

We were lucky to get into Jenny Lake Campground in the Grand Tetons as it filled every day we were there.  While the views are not spectacular unless you're lucky enough to get into one of the first few sites, the location is fantastic with hiking trails, bike trails, boating, interpretive centers, and spectacular vistas nearby.  Check out the deer having a snack next to our tent:

We opted for the lazy path to the Cascades Canyon Trail - the ferry ride across Jenny Lake.

The Cascades Canyon trail offers a steep climb at the outset to Inspiration Point, and from there is a fairly easy walk through the forest beside a bubbling brook and many small waterfalls.  The fall colors are just beginning to appear.

The trail goes past some incredibly twisted rocks, and if you look at them long enough, you start to see people's faces...sort of like looking at Mount Rushmore after a Grateful Dead concert.

The trail presents a gentle uphill incline, and is lined by raspberry bushes in many places, which should be a clue that it's a good place to see a bear.

The tiny brown-black dot near the center of this next picture is a black bear, stuffing itself with berries on the hillside opposite the trail.

By the time we got close to where the bear was having lunch, it was pretty much obscured by the thicket.  However, we knew it was still there because the moose munching on plants near the creek below kept looking up the hill.

While the bear and the moose paid no attention to us, the moment our son sat on a rock to have a snack, a ground squirrel appeared out of thin air.

The visitors centers in Grand Teton National Park are impressive and extremely well-funded.  This is no doubt partially due to the fact that the global central banksters favor Jackson Hole, WY with an annual visit, and bring a trail of money with them that showers the area from helicopters and private jets.  However, take advantage of their largess, as all of the visitor centers are worth a visit.  The Laurence S. Rockefeller Preserve Center in particular offers an extremely eclectic and unique experience.  It has a fantastic library of books on plants, wildlife, local trails, and many other things related to the outdoors, and an equally impressive reading room in which to enjoy them, a room specifically for listening to sounds of the forest, and another that presents both images and sounds in a museum-like venue.  It is absolutely worth the time spent to visit this small but special interpretive center.  It also offers up one of the better conservation quotes I've seen, from Laurance S. Rockefeller himself.  "How we treat our land, how we build upon it, how we act toward our air and water, will in the long run tell what kind of people we really are."