2020 Condo Trip 2.0: Jackson Hole

This is part two of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

 

Jackson Hole

So the drive up from Laramie to Jackson was pretty uneventful. The governor of Wyoming, in a misguided effort to save money after having to deal with the costs to state revenues of Corona Virus, ordered a bunch of highway rest areas closed. Today's newspaper featured a story about residents who live along highways having to deal with human feces along their driveways, and of course the expense of cleanup is going to be borne by the state.

I just thought that was kind of funny. I feel sorry for the highway travellers who just reach the point of having to take a dump out in the open because the state's trying to save a buck. Do rest areas really cost that much to operate?

Anyway. While I was planning this trip I found a web site called Only In Your State with all kinds of state-specific clickbait. I checked the page on Best Burgers in Each State, and found Broadway Burgers, a place in Rock Springs, listed. Since we would be passing through around lunch time, we went there. They were open only for curbside service, but they did have a couple of outside tables, so we ate there: basic burgers with all the trimming. We split a basket of fries, and we each ordered a milkshake (that being another specialty of the house). Everything -- I mean everything -- was great. The basket of fries was so big even I couldn't finish it. The burger was perfectly prepared, completely old-fashioned, with the shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes and chopped onion on a nice big, soft bun. So, so good. And the shakes were the old-fashioned kind: delivered in a parfait glass, whipped cream and cherry on top, and on the side, the metal mixing cup half-full of seconds.

It was, after all, National Vanilla Ice Cream day, and we celebrated in appropriate style.

We cruised up alongside the Wind River and Gros Ventre mountain ranges. When I was new to Wyoming, and travelling back and forth along I-80, I couldn't wait to get up and see this part of the state. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the USA, but now, as you approach Jackson and the National Parks, it becomes congested with vacation traffic.

That's the biggest change I've noticed here. When I came to the mountains of Wyoming 35 years ago, I was pretty much assured of being the only car on the road most of the time. The last time I was here, 15 years ago, it was much busier (in October, after the season), but even the town of Jackson was small and quaint. Our condo was at the edge of town, two blocks from the main square.

The last decade and a half has seen Jackson prosper in many ways. It's a large city now, by Wyoming standards, something like 10,000 people, and according to yesterday's paper, despite the pandemic, this year's tourism is setting records. The vacant lots have all been built into lodging, and there are no vacancies in any of them; the highway into town is lined with trendy new businesses for several miles (heading south, that is; to the north Jackson Hole is all protected land, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post). Jackson is crowded, and its ambience is exactly the same as what I experienced last year at Tahoe: Western American Vacationland, sort of Disneyesque.

The city of Jackson passed a mask ordinance very early on in the pandemic; Teton County, where Jackson sits, adopted the same ordinance soon after. This pissed off Wyoming's governor, he of the rest-area fiasco, but the city and county blew off his blustering and kept their ordinance in place. While Teton County has a number of cases (72 by today's count), it's fairly well controlled. All the shops in town require masks, most give them away, many limit the number of people in their shops, and most people on the street wear masks routinely, even when they are maintaining social distancing.

This morning we went for a short hike up Shade Monkey Trail and Sink or Swim Trail, on Snow King Mountain just a few blocks from our apartment. Very nice, especially the shady parts. The idea was, a short hike in the morning, then get cleaned up and go to the National Wildlife Museum of Art a couple of miles north of town. Instead, we walked through downtown, shopping for T-shirts and such. We picked up lunch from a take-away bagel place around the corner and ate in the apartment. Sherry turned the TV on and started knitting, and before you knew it, it was too late to go to the museum, which closes fairly early. So we watched movies on TV (The Bourne Supremacy and  The Bourne Ultimatum, with their excellent fight scenes and car chases) until it was time for dinner; which we ordered from the Nepali restaurant half a block down the street. Like I said, the town is full of trendy new businesses.

The plan for tomorrow is to head up the road for a photo excursion around Grand Teton National Park. I'm hoping for an early start, both to beat the weekend crowds and to get the early-morning low sun. We'll just see how that works out.

And here's a link to the picture album for this trip.

By the way, if you're reading this in your email, please click the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make somebody happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit; though I think it's always worth reading again....

Condo Week 2.0

This trip did not get off to the best start. We were in no hurry, as we were only driving as far as Amarillo on the first day, an easy day's drive. We stopped as usual at our preferred travel-breakfast restaurant in Kerrville, an hour out of San Antonio.

The staff there, and most of the patrons, were not wearing masks. Kerr County appears to be solid Trump country, so common sense is laid aside in favour of And-The-Horse-You-Rode-In-On political expression. We almost went elsewhere, but I do like the food at this little mom-and-pop place, and had to think hard about that. Then the waitress was there asking what we wanted to drink, and when I hesitated, still deciding, Sherry assumed I was just leaving it up to her, and ordered coffee. I was still thinking about going over and cancelling, telling the waitress why we weren't comfortable there, until she brought the coffee. At that point I felt committed. (They did at least have a sign on the door asking patrons not to sit at dirty tables until they'd had the chance to bus them and wipe them down with sterilizer.)

Had my two breakfast tacos & two cups of good coffee. Sherry went out to walk Carly while I paid the bill. That's when I realized I'd left home without my wallet.

That was the end of Condo Week 1.0. After an hour's drive home, we launched Condo Week 2.0. It has, so far, gone much better than Version 1.0. Kind of like the difference between Windows 7 and Windows XP. (I still miss my Windows XP computer, which lasted 16 years with no major problem, and 3 more years after the first hard drive failed; compared to this Apple MacBook Air, which lasted a few months before the motherboard had to be replaced (under the manufacturer's warranty), and another year before it had to be replaced again (under the credit card extended warranty). It's already getting persnickity again, but if the damn board goes again, so does the computer.)

But I digress.

We make the trip to Colorado with the dog every year, at Christmas, so we have our favourite spots: the restaurant in Kerrville; the hotel in Amarillo and the Thai place across the road; the breakfast burritos smothered in green chili at Sierra Grande in Des Moines, New Mexico; and, for some reason, a gas station in Castle Rock, Colorado. (That last is just coincidence; no matter where I fill up the time before, that's always where I need another tank. I don't know why.) This time it's summer, but we hit all the same spots. Because we're going on to Wyoming, to a condo where pets aren't allowed, we dropped Carly off at our niece's house in Golden -- via a touchless curbside delivery, of course, because of the pandemic. Their dog,

cousins

Aspen, is Carly's unrelated identical-twin cousin. I wouldn't have thought that possible, but if they didn't have collars on it would be almost impossible to tell them apart.

Now we're in Laramie for the night, after a stop at Vedauwoo Rocks

Turtle Rock, in Vedauwoo Rocks

(pronounced VEE-da-voo) in the Laramie Mountains. I used to go up there when I lived in Cheyenne. You'd just pull off the road and start climbing around in the rocks. Now it's all been improved by the Forest Service (it's in the Medicine Bow National Forest), and there's a campground and places for RVs and marked trails and warning signs, and they charge fees (which we don't have to pay, being Old Folks with the lifetime pass, but still...). Thirty-five years ago, there'd have been almost no one around on a Saturday; now, the parking lot was full, on a Wednesday. I hadn't realized that so much had changed, in what seems like the blink of an eye until I consciously think about how long it's actually been since I was there.

Before dinner we took a little tour of Laramie; our hotel is up on a ridge west of town, while the town is down in the valley. In Wyoming, all the towns in the valleys, because that's where the water is and the wind isn't. Laramie now is as big as Cheyenne was when I lived there in the '80s -- 30,000 people, but it also has the University of Wyoming, with its 14,000 students, so it seems bigger. But looking from my hotel across the city, it is clearly a very small city. We're thinking of buying a summer home here. We went across town (took no time at all) and then back to the old part of the city, 3rd & 4th Streets, and had a nice dinner at a brew pub called Accomplice. (Sherry discovered that you can now use "Covid-19 precautions" as a filter on Trip Advisor. That's good to know.) Excellent beer, excellent pizza. Apple fritter? We disagreed: Sherry liked it because it was crunchy; I thought it tasted burnt.

And as we were wandering back to our car, we passed a small bar filled with happy college-aged people, all crowded together without masks, ensuring the next generation of corona virus. Sad that, in a few weeks, one percent of them will be dead and a third of them will live with heart and lung ailments for the rest of their lives. Without having had the pleasure of a lifetime of smoking tobacco and eating fatty foods. So sad.

By the way, if you're reading this in your email, please click the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make somebody happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit; though I think it's always worth reading again....