15. String and Jenny Lakes
An easy 3 1/2-mile hiking trail encircles String Lake, the narrow connector between Leigh Lake to the north and Jenny Lake to the south. In early summer the path winds past clumps of calypso orchids, which look like pink, spoon-tailed birds in flight. They are one of the loveliest of the park’s 15 orchid species.

Farther south, a turnout looks across cerulean Jenny Lake into Cascade Canyon. Down the road near the ranger station, you can take a summer shuttle boat across the lake to the Cascade Canyon Trail. Its lower section wanders through a wonderland of evergreens and wildflowers to such inviting locations as Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, overlooking Jackson Hole.

16. Teton Glacier Turnout
At the south end of Jenny Lake the drive rejoins Teton Park Road southbound. From the turnout up ahead, you can view Teton Glacier, one of 12 still active rivers of slowly flowing ice in the range — a reminder that the natural forces that formed these mountains continue imperceptibly but steadily.

17. Taggart Lake Trailhead
Another of those natural forces is fire, and to the west at Taggart Lake Trailhead, you can see the scar of a 1985 blaze that burned out of control with such intensity that pines literally exploded and boulders cracked from the heat. Despite their seeming destructiveness, however, forest fires ignited by lightning cleansed and regenerated forests for eons and ecologists now question whether such blazes should automatically be quenched. An incidental legacy of the fire is unblocked mountain views and, in the summers, a riot of wildflowers.

18. Menor’s Ferry Historic Site
Exhibits at this site include an old homestead dating from 1894, a smokehouse, a well, Teton memorabilia, and a replica of the old cable ferry that operated here until 1927. Most important, at this site in 1923 a meeting was held among farsighted conservationists that led eventually to the creation of Grand Teton National Park.