Schwabacher's Landing

When I was pre-planning my visit to the Tetons, I looked over many images of the park and kept noticing that I was really drawn to the images from Schwabacher's Landing.  So, of course, I wanted to work it in as a location to visit.

Like all the famous views in the Tetons it is a marked turnoff from the highway.  You follow a gravel road down to the river.  Now the only tricky part is the first place you get to is not where you want to be.  Follow the road to the end and a small parking lot.  You will see the river, and the boat put in-but that is not "the shot" either.  Follow a path to the right and you walk along the edge of some beaver ponds. Finally reach an area with a bench and the famous framed view.

I set up there one morning and waited for the light.  Several other people showed up.  There were just enough clouds in the sky to be a shot.

I got mine.

However, I was actually kind of underwhelmed with it.  Turns out that "the shot" was not all I hoped it would be.  So I started walking back along the length of the beaver pond until  found one of the beaver dams.  The pond was more narrow, the grass was taller, and  some of the trees on the far side were dead.

This had much more interest and I worked that and got this second image, which I like significantly better.

So pre-planning gave me a good place to start but actually taking some time there got me both something a little different and also a little better.