Category: The Valley

It amazes me sometimes, that I can drive a couple miles up the road from the house, and get shots like this. Took these twenty minutes ago…

Here’s some more:

Ahh, nothing like a hay field with a view of the Tetons, and an old barn, to wrap up my week on the road…

I had some time to kill in Victor today, so I went up the Old Jackson Highway to here. This is the road that existed before Hwy 33 was created to meet up with Hwy 22, going to Jackson, WY.

The property was recently developed to be a subdivision, but the crash ruined that. Now it’s just a place to take photos before the bears block my retreat back to the bus.

Driggs has a pretty sweet little skate park. They’re building a new skate park behind this one, for the newbies, and behind that is a Frisbee course. There’s also a new bike trail being constructed that seems to connect the whole valley.

Sure beats needles in the downtown city park, drive-by shootings, and crack houses :-)

Steph and I rode down to Rexburg today with my sister Lorelle. Just before we got to the bridge over the Teton River, the girls started talking about the dead cow.

Turns out they have been seeing this blob laying in the water for the last month!

I couldn’t believe any responsible rancher would leave an animal down that long, so we decided to check it out on the way back.

Guess what, dead cow. Why have they left this animal dead in the water for so long?

I turned 65 this morning, and this photo I took yesterday just seemed appropriate…

The farmers around here can usually pull off two hay crops in the summer. This is the first one, and the second crop is vigorously underway.

Great event! Many more runners this year and the Driggs City Park was hopping. Had a good time and snapped a few shots:

SlideShow (Tin Cup 2011)

This is old Mormon farming country, and it is Idaho, so the main crop has always been potatoes. When I first came here I was struck by these storage units, new and old, scattered around the area.

I have since learned that Mormon’s don’t like tearing old family stuff down, an endearing quality…

This one is off Hwy 33 between Driggs and Tetonia. I snapped the shot today.

The purpose of the three shots, is for evaluation. The original was taken from a distance, and lacks the quality I’m used to with my former camera. The artsy one is just for fun, but the third shot is done using Gimp2‘s cartoon mode, which adds an interesting texture to my point and shoot camera quality…

I’ve been admiring this barn for years now, finally decided to stop and do a photo shoot.

SlideShow (Tetonia Barn)

This is the main road out of Victor, to Bates, at the foot of the Big Hole mountains, which continues north and back into Driggs. There’s some really nice farmland just west of town, presented here:

Also shot a couple of videos of the local creek trying to get melting snow down to the Teton River. The infrastructure is straining:

I make my living (as meager as it is) driving Hwy 33 across the beautiful Teton Valley. I’ve been doing this for five years and I’ve been blinded by blizzards, tossed into the other lane by wind, and forced to a stop by cattle drives.

But I’ve never seen this. Record snow up on the mountains, and a slow warming spring, is bringing the water down late this year. It’s getting worse every day and Steph had to call the county because her employers Hardwood Floor company was in danger. The Fire Department responded and sand-bagged a diversion to save the building. Kudos!

I took a few shots today, while driving between Driggs and Victor:

SlideShow (Water On Road)

Steph and I got up early for the Balloon Races but they shut them down this morning due to wind. Probably a good thing because this blog would have fallen off the internet from too much content.

We mosied down to Victor for the parade, around 9am. This is my sixth parade here, and it was a dandy. They kept the kids out of the street while chasing candy, and the crowd maintained it’s line. Two years ago the crowd kept layering inward on both sides and the wide, two line parade route, was down to one narrow lane.

I snapped a couple of pictures (196 actually) and I thought about trimming them down, but I realized they form a nice start to finish view of the event, so they’re all here. Open the SlideShow, click full screen (lower right corner), and kick back.

I also grabbed a couple of videos. The one with the dancing girls is run by Steph’s bosses daughter, Teasha Tolbert, so I opted for video instead of photos.

…and we had killer barbeque from the Knotty Pine :-)

Teasha’s Elite Dance Studio:

Tall Uncle Sam:

SlideShow (Victor, ID Parade 2011)

Celebrate America was an amazing event here in Teton Valley! I got to Huntsman Springs early, toured the grounds and then camped on Catherine’s deck until Steph and Sis showed up. The condo is owned by my sister Lorelle, rented by her daughter Catherine and is right up against the area used for event parking. It was fun to watch a constant stream of people arriving, filling up this huge parking lot.

Anyway, had a great time, made several trips over to the events, got some good content.

We bailed early on Beck, as a means of escaping back to our house before the place burst at it’s seams. As we hit the main highway, I was blown away. All the people who don’t care about Beck were parked along the road waiting for the best fireworks show in the state. Hundreds of cars! I’ve never seen anything like it here.

Population wise, Teton Valley is small. Just a guess, but with the music festival and this event, the number of people in town was many times our population.

Steph and I finished our evening watching the fireworks from the comfort of our front porch and then dragged our tired asses into bed.

There’s some great stuff here: accidentally happening on Glenn Beck as I was shooting cars, a couple candid videos of Beck, and some cool shots of the crowd.

SlideShow (Celebrate America)

Adding some raw videos here. I’m just going to upload them in the cameras .mov mode and let Flickr turn them into Flash. Consider them a candid, un-edited view, of the days events.