If you are going to one, you have to go to the other. Grand Teton and Yellowstone are next door neighbors and if you pay to get into one then it seemed like a great “twofer” deal. And it certainly was!

Grand Teton National Park lies to the south of Yellowstone. When you think of what an archetypical mountain range might look like then a picture of the Grand Teton range might be the photograph that appears in the dictionary definition of “mountain range”.

Now that’s what I call a mountain range!

It was while I was out on a moose mission (see my next post)  in the northern part of the park when I came upon cars pulled over on both sides of the road and a ranger keeping visitors at bay. Now this is always is a good sign. At first I though that everyone must be looking at a roadside bison. There was a large brown creature foraging in the field to the right side of the road. But no, it was so much more. It was a lone grizzly bear fattening up before it’s winter hibernation.

The grizzly bear is the official state mammal of California, but the only place you will see is a grizz in on the state flag. We are are the only state in the union to have an extinct official state mammal. The last grizzly in California was killed in 1922. One was reported to have been seen two years later in Sequoia National Park and since then, no grizzly has ever been seen in California.

A sketch from my photo of the grizzly.