June 28, 2010, Grand Teton NP, Wyoming

We decided to hike the part of the Jenny Lake trail that is open. Apparently, there is a carcass on part of the trail that a bear is staying close too. The trail will be closed for quite a while. We took a little detour on the Moose trail and were planning on just walking in a little ways but when we started back, there was a bear about 20 feet off the trail. It was pretty scary. It was a black bear (which are brown here). I don't know if it saw us but we did the “back away slowly and don't make eye contact” that all the signs say to do. We ended up going about a mile out of our way to get around him (or her, who knows? It was a big bear!). We got back on a part of the Jenny Lake trail that is pretty high up and were able to look down at the area we had been in and we could see him/her out in the open but from a very safe distance. That was one healthy looking bear! I don't ever want to get that close to one again! We took the boat ride back across the lake, which was a lot of fun.

The small brown blob in the upper right is the bear. We were safely high above it!
We also ran across some really cute baby marmots (mom is pretty cute too).

Baby Yellow Bellied Marmot

Yellow Bellied Marmot

Unusual flower