YEAH, I'M GOIN' TO JACKSON, LOOK OUT JACKSON TOWN--post number 800

It’s about eighty miles from here to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Usually in the winter this trip takes a little longer than the usual hour and a half because of snow over Teton Pass, elevation, 8,431 ft (2,570 m).  But when we went a week ago the snow was late in coming.

 DH and I had been talkin’ ‘bout Jackson for a while. We needed a break from the same ‘ol so we got in my Subaru and headed for Wyoming.

 Accommodations are reasonable there in late November since it’s between tourist season and ski season. But this also means there’s not a lot going on.

  But they were lighting the Christmas lights that night so we gathered with the crowd waiting for the arrival of Santa, the countdown and the official throwing of the switch to light up the town square.

 The antler arches which decorate the four corners of the square are the iconic symbol of the town.

Each arch is made out of thousands of pounds of elk antlers collected by boy scouts from the Elk Refuge.

 Bull elk shed their antlers each spring so no animals were harmed in the making of the arches.

 After the main event DH and I wandered off to do a little window shopping in this town still working to hold on to its image of the Old West.

 Instead of sidewalks, there are boardwalks.  There are also a lot of beards, boots and big dogs.

 Speaking of antlers, the stores have them.  Just in case you want a chandelier, wine rack, gun rack, or hunting knife made out of antlers, this is the place to shop.  You can also find lots of fancy fine furs with movie star prices.  I don’t think those fashions can make the same claim as the antlers about the safety of animals.

 Here we see a Jackson Hole Christmas tree decorated with cutesy moose and bear ornaments.  And, yes, that is a dead, stuffed bobcat keeping guard.

Here is another piece of taxidermy; a big, bad, black wolf rug draped over a chair made out of rustic tree limbs.

Rocking chairs for your hunting lodge made from chunks of twisted branches. The prices were up there with oil paintings by master artists.

 Frontier clothes to make any city slicker look just like Davy Crockett.

Of course every western tourist town has plenty of boots to take home.

 Boots for the ladies in all kinds of candy colors.

 Even though there wasn’t any snow, there were still plenty of snow boots to wear to the ski hill.

Yes hats.  I always like to take photos of the hats.

 Some of these straw hats already had that broken in, sweaty look so you won’t look like a dude when you wear one.  (Yeah, right.)

 Head gear for the skiers but not much in the way of color selection.

 

Since the only snow on the Jackson Hole side of the Tetons was thin and being made by machines we went to the west side to visit Grand Targhee resort.  The visitors to these ski hills were there less to be seen and more for serious skiing. Plus the lift tickets were less.

 Real powder snow from heaven.

Since we visited last week, a big storm dropped another foot or so of snow.  

Hey, Byron, the runs are deep and fast.  Think about that while you soak up the sun and sand in California.