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JACKSON, GRAND TETON, WEST YELLOWSTONE
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Ok, so I think I left off having made it up to Jackson. In short, Jackson is a cool town. I’d never seen so many obvious Vandwellers. (Flagstaff comes close, but there it’s more overland trucks and SUVs). The bad part about Jackson: the super-tourists and super tourist shops at the town square.
I observed the vacation process of the female Asian tourist:
- Always, ALWAYS walk with phone in hand. Half of the time, phone pointed at face either taking selfies or participating on social media.
- Walk up to something (could anything that stands out: maybe the arches made of (fake?) elk horns at each corner of the town square, or maybe the war memorial in the middle of it)
- Look at that thing for 2.5 seconds. Don’t read any of the text.
- Take selfies for the next 280 seconds. After the perfect selfie, take a picture with various combinations of your travel partners. If you are in front of a statue, pose just like the statue.
This was not specific to asian women, but they seemed to be the most developed in this phone-centric vacation process.
I saw a guy who sealed the deal on the Jackson town square image: he was walking across the street recording what was probably a video using a phone on a selfie stick. Halfway across the street, he finishes the video, and tucks the selfie stick under his arm. He also has a DSLR hanging from his neck. Ok, maybe next he will use that to take a picture? Nope. Syke! He pulls a TABLET out of I can’t remember where, and holds it up in front of him to take a picture (probably of the elk horn arch he was approaching) This man has fully mastered the art of juggling multiple devices to produce the highest rate of Facebook and Snapchat spam.
The town square is not all bad. There are some cool shops there. I was impressed with the hats in those shops. I don’t know hat names - these are big round ones, but not full cowboy hats. They seemed like ok deals for how nice they appeared. I could use a hat like that, but I don’t know prices or how to judge quality, so I passed, assuming they are as overpriced as some of the other things in their store.
The next better thing about the town square is the free Wifi. There is Jackson city-provided Wifi there. It works better towards the south side of the square. This was important, because while I had a full signal, the Verizon cellular data speed in Jackson is worthless for anything other than text.
The best thing about the square was a conversation I had there. I was sitting on a bench reading a book, and an older gentleman sat down on the other end of the bench. He wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there and looking around. He had been there 20-30 minutes when I got to a stopping point in my book and struck up a conversation with him. He’s had an interesting life, at least as far as his career goes. He grew up in NYC and at age 15, right after his father died, he quit school and bought a dump truck and a chainsaw. He went out to Western NY and hustled himself a job doing tree maintenance work at a college or university. Then he went to school there. He went down a few career paths, leading to him being involved very early in the semiconductor industry, and eventually getting a big windfall from the sale of a startup company he co-founded. He’s traveled to a many different parts of the world and is a thoughtful and clear-speaking guy. He had very good advice, but it was nearly all about work. I tried to get some advice from him on long-term self-actualization, but the best I could get was advice on where to spend time this fall/winter given my outdoor activity interests (he said California).
I spent about a day and a half in Jackson. I got maps and good advice at the visitor’s center, and bought a one-year National Parks pass. Next, I drove up into Grand Teton National park. I went to Jenny lake to go for a bike ride. There aren’t any good roads for road cycling in GTNP, but there is a 22 mile bike trail going from Jackson to Jenny lake. So I drove up to the lake and road to Jackson and back. I rode pretty hard and while I felt ok most of the ride, during the last 25% of it, I was fatigued. I could ride ok at an endurance or even tempo pace, but I had absolutely no top end punch. I didn’t really intend to ride so hard/long that I’d deplete my muscle glycogen like that. I used to ride a LOT, and was in WAY better shape a few years ago. It’s hard not to always compare myself to my best fitness
My neck, feet, and hands/wrists were quite fatigued by the end of the ride. It was too far/ too hard.. I need to ride less than that - about half as much at that exertion. That will be plenty to improve my fitness. And I need to work back up to all of my body being able to handle hard and long rides. There one silver lining in this is that I can get great workouts in without having to ride a bunch of hours now :-D :-D
The Tetons are really cool mountains. As my brother described to me about a week before, the area is pretty flat, and all the sudden the mountains shoot up steeply. They are very different from the Colorado rockies. They were similar to the mountains I saw years ago in Banff. I had a good clear view of them while driving up and while bicycling south. But when cycling back north, I noticed a lot of smoke from one or two of the nearby forest fires rolling in. By the time I got back to Jenny lake, it was really smoky and hazy. Enough to spoil all the good views. I didn’t take any pictures in GTNP before the smoke, and then it wasn’t worth it.
I was going to drive over to the National Forest east of GTNP to camp, but as I started driving that way, I could see it was smoky over there too. I decided to head up into Yellowstone and see if it was better there. So I drove north and the smoke gradually faded from view.
I didn’t take any pictures in Jackson. I need to start taking pictures in the towns also.
This was after I’d been driving north a bit, and it was less smoky than in the middle of GTNP, but still enough to spoil a view.
I stopped at some of the geysers/hot springs/whatever they’re called. I did stop at Old Faithful. I was really hungry and decided to eat before I walked over. It erupted while I was eating. It was too late in the evening to wait around for the next one, so I continued west.
I’m just going to dump the pictures out. I’ll do some ruminating later on my overall impressions of Yellowstone and the surrounding areas.
If you fall off, CERTAIN DEATH!
When I’d get gusts of wind blowing from this one towards me, I’d feel pockets of air 30+ degrees warmer than ambient. wow!
