We had high hopes for wildlife spotting in Grand Teton National Park. And, we saw deer within 15 minutes of driving into the park. That sure seemed to bode well.

But, then things got quiet. Sure, we saw pronghorn, which are all over the park.

And, we saw bison, but they were always very far from the road. And, we saw a ton of chipmunks and squirrels.

But, we didn’t see anything big. No bears. No elk. No moose. And, then, our luck changed. As we were hiking Taggart Lake, we came across this guy.

A marten. I’d never even heard of a marten. And, apparently, sightings are very rare. How adorable is it? This guy was on the trail ahead of us and he was so still I thought he was a log and Robert thought he was a pile of poop. I guess we both need glasses. Thankfully, we snapped this (not very good) photo right before he ran away. How cool is that?

And that little marten opened the floodgates. On our last two days in Grand Teton, we saw three bears. Bears! My nemesis! The critter I always want to spot and almost never do. Three of them!

Yes, that is our very dirty car in the above photo. No, the door is not open. Yes, it was a little bit freaky to be this close to a bear. Yes, Robert did encourage me, without success, to roll up the window.

Yes, that is a bear climbing a tree. He was right on the side of the road and didn’t care at all that cars were slowly driving by and a ranger was directing traffic.

And, then we saw two absolutely huge elk. They were both far away, but they were incredible.

And, last, but certainly not least, we saw three moose, including a momma with her baby.

We couldn’t have been happier with our animal spotting. What a trip!