The Beginning Of Sunrise At Oxbow Bend

The beginning of sunrise at Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

I’ve finally finished up all the Yellowstone images I captured during the course of my 3-day visit there. I’ve moved on to editing the photos I took during my Grand Teton National Park stay. My sister worries that I’ll be bored after I am totally finished with the photo edits, but I assure her I have never been bored ever, except during those last months at my old job in Texas. I figure it will probably take me this month to finish up Grand Teton as well as the North Rim. Once I am finished with the photos, I will have plenty of time to start writing articles for 2019 for the National Parks Traveler, using the photos I took during my road trip move. I already have ideas brewing, but just haven’t put virtual pen to virtual paper yet.

As for this shot: Oxbow Bend is an iconic location within the park, and many a sunrise image from there has shown up in various and sundry publications. For those of you who have never been, there is actually a small parking lot on the river side of the road, but to me, the best views of the mountains are to be seen if you park on the wide shoulder alongside the road on the same side as the parking lot. The shoulders are actually marked, so it’s legal to park there, but on that side only and not on the other side, which has no shoulder to it at all, if I remember correctly.

On the day I arrived in the park, as I was driving to the Jackson Lake Lodge that early afternoon, this area was jam-packed with people (since it was late July). The mornings, however, are a different story, but it’s a good idea to get there pre-dawn to stake out a place for sunrise images, because more people began to arrive as the day progresses.