Today was a travel day – going from Thermopolis, Wyoming to the Colter Bay Campground at Grand Teton National Park.

Wyoming has a wonderful feature to its highway system in which it posts signs that name the surrounding geologic features and dates when they formed. It made for a fun drive, passing through the puce and gray rock walls with gigantic broken off boulders stacked within the Wind River Canyon, carved by the Bighorn River.

Just past the southeastern edge of the Boysen Resevoir, we turned west across the Wind River Indian Reservation. After a fairly unremarkable stretch of flat and arid land, the road began to rise and we crested at Togwotee Pass, 9,659 feet. The pass was named in 1873 for Togwotee (TOE-guh-dee), a Shoshone guide to Captain William Jones of the Army Corps of Engineers. The view of the Teton Range coming down from the pass is one of the greatest in the world and a big reason why it’s one of the most commonly traveled routes into the National Park.

Our destination was the Colter Bay Campground, which sits on Jackson Lake. It was also one of the most difficult campgrounds to reserve, so plan ahead. Thanks to Angela’s persistence, we secured one of the best spots about 100 yards from the lake. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived which gave us incredible views of the sun setting behind the mountains. We were out of food and opted to eat dinner at the Colter Bay Restaurant. Instead of bread prior to the meal, they brought out biscuits and honey butter – the meal wasn’t very good, but biscuits never fail.