So far from the concrete canyons of Manhattan

For the friends who said, "show picures of your vacation."I took several but Leslie had a brand new, first digital camera and was learning the settings. She took about 300 and some are quite good. I have prints of some but the ones below are mine, which owe more to the light and the scenery than to my skill. First a bucolic, peaceful view of the Grand Tetons from Summit point. This is picture postcard land. The Tetns with Jackson Lake below.

The picture below is partly for myself today. It's full hot summer here, they're laying new tar on Broadway [I've just come in from a drugstore errand] and it even smells very hot, very near hellish, out there. The water below was just beneath a waterfall that was entirely snow melt. Even 100 feet away it was like stepping into a walk in refrigerator. The rushing power of the water was also wonderful.

Below is a meadow path beneath the mountains that lead into and out of forested areas and finally to a calm beatiful, incredibly reflective lake. The trail's delight was that it went in and out of different ecologies every half mile or so; in a way it was perhaps the most perfect walking path I've been on -- some 3-1/2 miles long, mild uphills but not strenuous. It would be wonderful to live a few miles from it and walk there say once a week or so.

For most Amerians there is only The Grand Canyon and this isn't it. But it IS the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone; and grand it is. It is 20 miles long with at least two spectacular waterfalls. It was painted by Thomas Moran ater a sketch he made from a point to which we walked. No, it's not the gasp-inspiring GRAND Canyon but ... pretty grand.