Day 9 and 10 - The Road to Pinedale and the Float Trip down the Snake River

We left Estes Park on Day 9 to travel to Pinedale Wyoming, our last stop before the real adventure begins.  It was a gorgeous road with a meandering river and rocky cliffs.  This was the last of our days in Colorado and most of the day was spent driving across Wyoming on Rt. 80.

These were all taken on the road that got us back to Rt. 25 in Colorado where we headed north for Wyoming.

The amazing part of this journey was the sheer number of Pronghorn Antelopes we saw.  They seemed to be every ten feet and always walking away from us!!  After awhile, it was just "another pronghorn".  I had seen pronghorns in Wyoming on my last trip but not the number that I saw this day!!

 As we got further along, the flat plains turned into these mesas.  The geology of the areas out west are certainly interesting and I bought a book at Yellowstone which hopefully will help me to understand more what I am seeing.

As we got closer to Pinedale we finally started to see the mountains.

We woke up bright and early the next morning to get to north of Jackson Hole Wyoming where we were scheduled to take a Float trip down the Snake River on a large raft.  This would take us two hours and ten miles down the Snake River through parts of the Grand Tetons.

This was the view from the meeting place for the float boat tour.  Vicki and Joan had returned to Jackson to take a tram ride which I decided to pass on.  They came very close to not making the raft trip in time as they hit really bad traffic but they made it!!  We all got into a bus to  make the ten mile drive to the launch site.  At the site, we were given life vests and helped onto this very rocky large raft.  There were probably ten of us and the oarsman/guide for the trip.

Our guide was right behind me.  At first I was sitting on the carpeted floor but moved up to the side later on.  I had decided to take my "point and shoot" rather than one of my SLRs as I was a little nervous about the water and what we might encounter.  Best decision o the day!!

 Gorgeous views floating down the river.  We did see some ducks and a couple of Bald Eagles but my small camera is just not good enough to capture good images. It is fine for scenery though!

 You might note that the images are getting more and more overcast.....

 We were starting to hear thunder and seeing lightening off in the mountains.

 About an hour into the journey, ponchos were handed out to all the passengers and shortly thereafter the rain came and came.  Then the hail came and kept getting bigger and bigger,  The ponchos protected us from the pounding rain but that rain and hail did run off directly onto our clothes.  It cleared  a bit and then more rain and bigger hail!!  We were soaked by the time we got back to the beginning!!  We still had to drive to West Yellowstone where we would be staying for the next four nights.