Day 31...Jackson, WY

Today we left Park City, UT after breakfast at our Holiday Inn Express, and headed to Jackson, WY.  It was about a 4.5 hour drive and we got to cross over into Idaho, someplace I don't think we ever thought we'd enter.  We arrived in Jackson around 2:00 and checked into our Motel 6, seemingly the cheapest place you can get a room here, but newly renovated to look like where Ikea employees might sleep.

We decided to drive over to the Jackson Visitor Center first.  We re-learned what we already knew...our plan to visit Yellowstone wasn't going to pan out.  Spring isn't really the same thing in this part of the country as we generally know it on Long Island...of course, the weather there doesn't seem so great right now either.  They expect many areas of the park to be snow-covered until July and the entrance closer to Jackson (the reason we booked here) isn't opening until May 14...we would have to drive 3 hours to the west entrance (and 3 hours back.)  We figured most of this out a few days ago, so we had already cut out one day of our visit here - originally three nights.  Luckily, we are right next door to the Grand Teton National Park.  So, we drove over to the Visitor Center there and met with a ranger to figure out what we would be able to do tomorrow.

Seems hiking is mostly out of the question since we seem to have left our gaiters at home.  However, it's a great time to see wildlife like elk, moose and bears!  So, our plan tomorrow is to mostly drive through the park and see what we can see.  The weather report is iffy - 60% chance of rain/snow - but we'll stay positive for now.

We went to dinner at a bar/grill restaurant, Sidewinder's - unfortunately, we left the camera in the car, because we got a crazy "S" shaped homemade pretzel filled with mozzarella cheese...yum.  Of course, when you eat something like that as an appetizer, you don't get too far through your dinner...it was worth it, though.

We decided to drive downtown, maybe 2 miles from our hotel, and walk around for a little while.  It was only about 45-50 degrees and pretty much everything was closed, since it's Sunday night and it was already about 7:00, but Jackson seems much bigger than we anticipated and has a ton of nice looking shops and restaurants and art galleries downtown...not all that much different than the feel of Park City...maybe more outdoorsy-feeling, if that makes sense.  They actually have a center square area marked by arches made of elk horns, which are kind of cool...this area reminded us of Santa Fe.  The elk antlers were collected from the Elk Refuge by local Boy Scouts after the elk shed them - they would sell them at auction to raise money and these particular antlers were purchased by the Rotary and made into arches back in 1960.

After we had pretty much seen all downtown had to offer on a Sunday night, we drove over to Teton Village, another few miles out of town - the highlight of that trip was seeing some buffalo on a ranch and catching the sun setting over the Grand Tetons.  Wish us luck on seeing some moose tomorrow!