Schwabacher Landing Grand Teton National Park

Part of the excitement of this trip out west was not having every hour of every day planned out. There were several spots we wanted to make time to hit, but there was enough flexibility on our drives for impromptu stops. I’m fairly certain you could make an entire trip composed of nothing but impromtu stops in the Tetons and Yellowstone. We pulled over several times in Idaho for wildlife and Oregon Trail historic landmarks. Schwabacher Landing was a spot that grabbed our interest when we initially sketched out a loose itinerary. On the drive into the Tetons, we spotted the sign for a pull-off and, at the end of a gravel road, came across this beautiful view. It wasn’t crowded, as we had the river to ourselves, but down in the gravel lot there was an artist with an easel behind her truck and several fly fisherman coming and going from somewhere downstream.

As I walked up the bank of the river and out at the wildflowers, I kept looking over my shoulder for bears, half expecting one to come charging out of the woods towards us. We wouldn’t see bears for a few more days. Lupines and red cardinal flowers were blooming in all their glory on the floodplain of the river, and no matter which way we looked from the mountain range on the horizon to the flowers underfoot, there was beauty.

We poked around awhile in the narrow braid of the Snake River and explored a beaver dam and the gnawed-on trees. The previous week we had watched an episode of Great Yellowstone Thaw, and learned how beavers create their dams. The spot in the clip below sure looks similar, doesn’t it? We were in the Tetons here, and the PBS series was Yellowstone. I should do some research and see if they filmed some in the Tetons.