Page 4 of 5
Fort Worth, Texas
By the shameless light of the broken afternoon
After Minnesota we’re now in Texas. I said the slideshow was random.
Give me five trips to Minnesota and I'm guaranteed to see the Guthrie Theatre at least three times (the other two layovers at MSP were too short to justify a trip), but give me two trips to Dallas and I'm guaranteed to make sure to get to Louis Kahn's landmark Kimbell Museum both times. A reasonably simple (but truthfully complex) building with concrete vaults and integrated, ingenious natural lighting, the building is a landmark in every imaginable way.
Right next door to the Kimbell, Tadao Ando's landmark Modern Art Museum is both influenced and overshadowed by Louis Kahn's far more famous museum, but that's most certainly not to say that the Modern is not worth a visit as well. Glass pavilions still project on a generous man made reflecting pool, creating view after view and an architectural experience that is clearly good enough to be second best in all of Fort Worth.
After Fort Worth, we’re in East Rutherford, New Jersey on a construction tour of an almost finished New Meadowlands Stadium, the, um, new Meadowlands stadium replacing Giants Stadium. The tour was organized by my local AIA section (Architects League of Northern New Jersey) and was, well, disappointing. Not because of the tour organizers (great job as always Architects League of Northern New Jersey), but rather because the stadium was so, so, so gray and boring. It was designed to house both the Giants and Jets, and because of that a decision was made to make everything gray and boring, a real lost opportunity for anyone who likes nice things.
As a reward for having to look at all those gray and boring construction pictures, let’s head out west and see something interesting.
After landing in Salt Lake City, I drove and drove (and drove) across parts of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming and then up and over Teton Pass to finally get to Jackson and to spend a generally rainy weekend at Grand Teton National Park. The Tetons are a spectacular mountain range with no foothills to block the view, a real rarity in most front ranges and easily the five star attraction of the valley in a one sided park where all the good views are on the west side of the highways, viewpoints and trails while the generally pretty country on the other side ends up just about completely ignored.
Before the rain and thunderstorms swept the park and valley once again, I enjoyed a quick hike during a rare dry early afternoon. Starting at Jenny Lake (which was thankfully not all that busy since it was still just before high tourist season), I boarded a Park Service boat across the lake to the Cascade Canyon trailhead. Time (and weather) did not favor a longer hike up the canyon, but I knew that I probably had just enough time to hit a few landmarks before the weather turned again. And since hardly any time at Jenny Lake beats absolutely no time at Jenny Lake, I took the opportunity to enjoy what I could, grateful for all that had happened and anxious for all that would come next.
And unlike other national park trips, I made a conscious decision not to obsess about finding wildlife and instead decided that I would concentrate on the scenery first. And while I hit most of the standard large mammal sightings without that added effort (moose, antelope, elk), I was most surprised to see one specific animal swimming across Jenny Lake in broad daylight. Parallel to the boat but a bit behind (and not really visible in photographs but clearly visible to the naked eye) a brown (colored) bear was swimming across the lake and right toward the Cascade Canyon trailhead. And while I did not see him (or her) in enough detail to confirm it, I strongly suspect that it a brown colored black bear and not a far larger and far more dangerous grizzly bear, based on personal bear experience.
Despite some trail construction and some surprisingly dangerous ice and snow patches on the well trodden trails, the familiar hike to a gushing Hidden Falls remained fairly easy with only a few uphill and rocky stretches. And while the falls may in fact be hidden from view right until you reach them, they're certainly easy to hear from most of the trail, especially at that time of the year (early June) when the snow melt is in full force and the rivers (and falls) can best be described as raging.
Despite the fact that the trail beyond Hidden Falls and up to Inspiration Point is described as strenuous, it is really closer to moderate in my opinion. Sure there are a few uphill stretches and a few sections with dropoffs but nothing too hard and certainly not as hard as last year's totally exposed strenuous hike to Delicate Arch or any of the good moderate to strenuous trails in Yosemite. At my predetermined stopping point on the trail was Inspiration Point, a rare chance to see across Jenny Lake, to see sweeping views of the boring side of the valley and to catch a tantalizing glimpse up Cascade Canyon, to see just enough to easily be able to justify a return trip to Jenny Lake, to justify another trip with enough time to wander deeper into the valley instead of always seemingly rushing to get back somewhere or to avoid some severe thunderstorm or other.
Since I have been told recently that the descriptions are getting a little out of hand, I'll try and hold back (at least this one time) and let you enjoy a front row, front range view at Grand Teton National Park without any additional commentary. Enjoy.
