Teton Point Turnout, Grand Teton National Park

It’s hard to find a turnout that doesn’t have a great view. That said this is one of the better ones as the angle of view bring out the iconic shape of the Tetons. Best viewed in the morning or early afternoon.

Just north of the Jackson Hole airport on the west side of state route 191 sits a small turnout where if you choose you can park on this semi-circle and step out of your vehicle. I stumbled across this location in the process of driving to Yellowstone. I had just eaten in Jackson, Wyoming and was headed north. After cresting a hill on the highway paralleling the Snake river I saw what was up until that point and still remains to this day the most awe inspiring and majestic sight I have ever seen. My eyes still water up as I type this review almost a full year later. I first stopped on the east side of the road at the large pull-off with the sign reading "Grand Teton National Park." At this point I knew I was in one of those special moments remembered for a lifetime. I first walked north up the road and crossed some flowing water, but soon I returned to my car. Still within view of the stop on the east of the highway I encountered the Teton Point Turnout on the west side. Facing west from this turnout, immediately on the ground begins a field. A sea of different types and sizes of grasses and shrubberies flows forth before your feet. This sea extends to a point where immediately your eyes are no longer concerned with matters on the flat ground. Rising immediately from this green expanse, dwarfing all else in view in all directions, is a mountain range that defines nature's example of an exclamation point. The view here on this side of the Tetons is expansive and amazing. The words "expansive and amazing" are barely worth anything when describing what took my breath away that day in July of 2020. No words approach the sight and feel I had at that moment...a moment I was lost in. A moment which stretched into ten hours. A memory which will carry on for eternity. That warm and sunny summer day, one full of sights new to me as I traversed this corner of Wyoming for the first time had found the exclamation point I didn't know was even capable of existing. All the Earth, all in the sky on the ground and in the water... All life, all plants, all animals and all of us... In my mind it all made sense. It all came together as something so much bigger than any one part of existence. Ten hours I sat in that field. I stood by the road in awe of everything this universe had to show and share with me that day. Ten hours of pure amazement, of a sight and an experience these mere words, clumsy and fumbling, almost insult. Ten hours of learning about myself and about life and about how we all are part of such a bigger picture. We all are connected to eachother and everything. Ten hours which do and always will carry with me eternally... Ten hours I parked my car on the side of some road and looked across a field to something I could never explain. I can't explain it for I am a mere one speck of individual insignificance when the only explanation could come from us all as a whole. These words, like the five stars I gave on the review of the Teton Point Turnout, will never be enough. The only sufficient review would have to come from us all...together...as one.