These 4 day trips from Jackson Hole reveal glorious nature and a Wild West vibe

07.10.2024 - 03:21 / lonelyplanet.com / Jackson Hole

Oct 6, 2024 • 6 min read

There’s plenty to keep you busy in the town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Yet most visitors use the valley as a home base to explore the staggeringly wild and beautiful wider area, too.

Two of America’s most famous national parks are within 60 miles (97km) of Jackson Hole, and the history of the American West feels omnipresent in the region. These four day trips show you just how.

Travel time: 20 minutes by car (15 miles)

Follow the Gros Ventre River northeast from Jackson through the lush Antelope Flats to reach Lower Slide Lake in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. A short detour north takes you to Mormon Row, a historic site within the bounds of Grand Teton National Park that was once the settlement of Grovont. Today, all that remains are a handful of homesteads featuring picturesque barns whose rugged loneliness against the backdrop of the mountains makes them sought-after by photographers. A herd of more than 700 bison calls this valley home, so your chances of a good photograph of the beasts are high.

Another 30 minutes in the car takes you to Lower Slide Lake, where a boat ramp offers easy access for kayaks, canoes, paddle boards and row boats. Stocked with trout for those eager to fish, the lake is stunning in the fall when the cottonwoods and aspens ring the shore with gold. A short interpretive trail explains local geology, in particular the massive landslide that formed the lake. Continue along and past the lake to find several pretty campgrounds and numerous trailheads providing access to the surrounding Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Travel time: 75 minutes by car to South Entrance (57 miles)

Rainbow-hued mineral springs, boiling mud pots, spouting geysers and spitting fumaroles: these geothermal mysteries lured 19th-century explorers to document a mysterious and dramatic landscape they described as a “hell.” These naturalists subsequently urged the government to preserve the area as Yellowstone National Park, establishing the national park system in the process.

Also designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Yellowstone preserves 10,000 hydrothermal features – more than half of all the geysers in the world. Among these is the world’s most famous: Old Faithful, which erupts every one to two hours and sends water as high as 180ft (55m) into the air. Underneath all of this, the geothermal forces that created Yellowstone continue to exert their power: scientists now believe Yellowstone sits atop one of the largest supervolcanoes in the world – and one that might be more active than previously thought.

While mud pots and geysers like Grand Prismatic Spring and Artist Paint Pots may provide you with your most spectacular photographs, there’s much more to the 2.2-million-acre