New Job, new apartment, new laptop...

This is the blog post of new things...if you couldn't tell by the title. First off, my new job. I am still working at Tulley's as my primary source of income, but I am now officially an assistant website designer! It appears all my effort in contacting local website designers has paid off! I will be doing random website design assignments from my boss on the side, mostly to gain experience in my field, but also to earn some extra cash. You know you have a cool boss when he says when he hires you, "Just make sure you don't loose any powder days working on anything for me." :D My boss seems really chill, a little weird, but overall chill. His company is no joke either, he designed the website for one of the biggest furniture hardware companies on the internet...the website he designed brings in about 3/4 of a million dollars to a local company here in Jackson Hole. I can definitely learn a lot from this guy, especially about e-commerce.

As for the new apartment, here are the much awaited pictures! The lighting is super yellow because I ended up taking all of them at night. Enjoy the photo tour!

The entry way, take an immediate left to...

The first bathroom, not much here, exit and go left to see...

The Hallway, with a nice storage closet, on the left you have...

My Bedroom, all I do is sleep in here, so its pretty simple, and comes with a nice...

Walk-in closet, go back out my room door and across the hall you will find...

Laura's room complete with a...

Ghetto-style vanity table, continue on to the next door to find...

Bathroom #2, very much like bathroom #1, leave the hallway to make your way back to the...

Kitchen and dining area, take a step closer to see...

More kitchen, walk in and turn around for a view of the...

Fridge and part of the living room, step out to see more...

Of the left side of the living room, go forward and slightly to the right for...

The corner...err office, step back and look right for more of the...

Living room...take a couple steps back for a more inclusive view, featuring...

Laura chatting on the phone! Advance towards the office and turn right for a profile view of the...

TV area and futon/guest bed. Go back towards the entry way and do a 270 degree pan for...


This all-encompassing view of the living room, dining area, kitchen and entry. Now just step outside for and look at the...

Deck. Big right? The sun has set but there is a beautiful...

Twilight view. Sorry to disappoint, but this completes the photo tour. Hope you all enjoyed seeing our new place as much as we enjoy living in it.

In other news, I received my new Apple MacBook Pro today after hunting down the fedex man who supposedly knocked on my door this morning. I LOVE it, and would even marry it if it were legal in the state of Wyoming. It's pretty much my new baby...


That's all the new stuff for now. My friend Marcus will be visiting next week, and there will be lots to post I'm sure...hopefully including some really cool Yellowstone pictures!

All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy...

Well, its been a while since my last post, but I've been really busy! This past week Laura and I have turned in applications to probably 20 places, but we didn't get quite the response we were looking for. Now is probably the slowest time of the year for Jackson Hole. All the summer people are leaving, a LOT of places are closing down for a month to get ready for winter, and NOBODY is hiring! We were told this would probably happen, but we decided to come early anyways...otherwise the town would have been swamped with all the new winter workers, and a good place to live would have been REALLY hard to find. Anyways, after a hard week of applying, we finally got our shot.

One of the local grocery stores, Albertson's, had a lot of European summer workers that all just left the USA after finishing their summer shifts, leaving tons of open positions. So we applied and had jobs the next day! A pee test later, we found ourselves in uniforms working 9 hours a days like our lives depended on it. It definitely feels good to have an income again though, that's for sure!


I got a job at the coffee shop inside Albertson's called Tulley's. I make the coffee and do some cashiering, and it is surprisingly very fun considering I'm not a coffee lover. Not to mention it pays pretty well...$11 something an hour plus tips! I think its going to be the perfect job to compliment my resort job, and still let me ski 3-4 days a week.


Laura got a job in the Albertson's bakery making cupcakes and stuff. She probably won't work there very long as shes likely leaving soon to work in the best local ski shop, Hoback Sports.


On a another job note, I have been emailing back and fourth with a local website designer, and he sounds really excited about possibly setting up a co-op/internship with me. I will be meeting with him sometime next week to discuss the details! It would be great to do this on the side and get some decent experience in my field while I'm out here being a ski bum.

The other day Laura and I bought the biggest pumpkin I have ever had in my entire life! It was only ten bucks, and I'm way more excited about it then I should be lol. I'm really looking forward to this Halloween because we have a lot of plans! My friend Marcus is coming to visit from New York City and we are going to carve pumpkins, go a dress-up Halloween party at Snake River Brewery, then see a haunted mill in Idaho! I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures posted on here of our shenanigans.


Other than that, the only news is that I finally got my new check card from the Bank of Jackson Hole. It has BEARS on it! Busting out that card whenever I buy something makes being a local feel that much more like a reality. It still doesn't really feel like we live here yet, I'm sure once we are skiing four days a week it will! :D


Thats it for now...next time I post, I will put up pictures of the inside of our apartment!

Oh, so this is normal...

So, I'm starting to realize that cool stuff in Jackson pretty much happens on a day to day basis. The other day I was driving to Grand Teton National Park (Just about a mile from the JH Ski Resort) to renew our Yellowstone/Grand Teton pass, and on the way back to town I saw something pretty awesome. On the side of the road, in one of the fields, was a wild herd of about 30 elk! It was crazy because there was only one adult male in the entire herd. I didn't have my zoom lense on me so the picture isn't too great, but you can get the idea of how incredible a herd of elk is to see. (I couldn't even fit all the elk in the picture, the bull elk is the one on the far left that most of them are looking at)


This old man came up to me who also stopped on the side of the road, I assume he was a local because he just kept spitting out elk facts to his friend. Then he turned to me and said "Elk are very smart animals." I said yeah or something like that, then we went on to explain, "See that one bull...he has about 30 chicks!" hahaha and then all of the Elk started to run away, and he spat out "Look there he goes taking them all to some party!" Weird, old guys with a sense of humor crack me up.

Here are some pics from the hike Laura and I took the other day. Like I said this trail is right across the stree from our apartment! I originally just wanted to hike the trail to try to get a good picture of the sunset, but then I found out that from the top you get a great view of town and the tetons! In the first picture of the butte, if you look closely above the skyline, you can see a man paraglyding.


So, yesterday I woke up and looked outside to find a GREAT surprise considering it was October 9th...SNOW!! What I thought was just going to be a little flurry with no accumulation, turned out to be about 2 inches of ground cover!


Sadly, it all came and left in about 3 hours, but the snow clouds hovered around town all afternoon which allowed me to take some cool pictures.


This one below is definitely the most odd looking picture. I took it from inside the car, and had to alter it a little bit so you could see the detail in the clouds...I have never seen clouds look like this before, it looked that crazy in person!


After a snowfilled morning, Laura and I turned in some applications, and headed to the premier of the new hit ski film CLAIM by Match Stick Productions at the historic Teton Theatre. It's awesome to live in a town thats on the premier tour for blockbuster ski films. It was definitely a different crowd than what we are used to watching movies with, but we both agreed the movie was pretty sick. If you like ski movies definitely check it out. You can see the trailer by clicking on the image below.

f anyone wants to send me a letter, package or wad of cash, I now have a mailing address. Here it is: (Or you can send Laura mail to the same P.O. Box w/ her name instead of mine)
Chris Handy
P.O. Box 6947
Jackson, WY 83002

As far as the job hunt goes, I'm pretty much just applying anywhere I see so I can have some kind of income before the real jobs kick in this november. More updates as stuff happens on that. Oh, and Laura and I finally got beds so we don't have to sleep on the floor anymore! I found a guy on craigslist selling 2 queen beds for dirt cheap in a nearby town...I love craigslist!!

Learning the Life of a Local...

Life in Jackson Hole is great. It's all I ever imagined plus more. I feel like moving out here was such a great decision, and every morning when I wake up and look up at the mountains I can't help but crack a smile. I almost feel like when I was living in Kentucky I was missing something, and that something is all around me...I feel so at home, even when 'home' is so far away. And it hasn't even started snowing yet :P

A lot of the stress Laura and I had when we first arrived here is now gone. I haven't blogged in a few days because we have been so busy, but on Monday we found an Apartment, and are now officially Jackson Hole Locals!! Finding a place to live for the next 6 months was really the thing we were most worried about, so it feels great to have that behind us. The past couple days have been so hectic, we've been shopping and unpacking and have just been trying to make this place livable for us.

Our apartment is located just outside of the historic downtown of Jackson, about 2 miles or so from town square. We have grocery stores on both sides of us, we are near the post office, and are between downtown and the ski resort. It's the perfect location! We got a 2 Bedroom, 2 Bath at a brand new apartment complex called Blair Place. The apartment is really big, has a nice patio, and amazing views! From both of the bedrooms, you can look out the window and see the Tetons and the peaks of the mountains in the Jackson Hole Ski Resort!! Below are some pics of the apartment building, the view from my window, and the view from our balcony.


From our balcony, you can see the buttes that surround Jackson, and make it a "Hole". Jackson is commonly known as Jackson Hole because many years ago fur trappers, or mountain men, entered the valley from the north and east and had to descend along relatively steep slopes, giving the sensation of entering a hole. The valley or "hole" surrounded by these mountains was named after one of the trappers named David Edward Jackson. Today Laura and I climbed one of the buttes, and lets just say we didn't realize what we were in for! It was a lot of hard work, but I was able to snap some sweet pictures along the way.

The trail is literally 500ft from the entrance to our apartment. After going through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks last week (both less than 1 hour away), hiking these buttes and knowing that a world-class ski resort is just around the corner (not to mention 2 other ski resorts within 30 minutes) we are starting to realize why so many people call this place home...


I will post pictures from the butte and some wildlife I saw today when I blog tomorrow, and will put up some pictures of the inside of our apartment once we get settled in!

Part two of the Road to JH, and our first days in JH...

First off I'd like to say thanks to everyone for actually reading this blog, and for all the great feedback I have gotten about it. Things have settled down a little bit here at the 49er hotel, and everyday I get more and more excited to be here. I'll start with telling about the last day of the trip here, then get into how life is here in town.

So, on the third day of our trip to JH, we woke up at 6am to take pictures of Devil's Tower at sunrise, and got lucky to see several groups of deer as we exited the park. This also gave us an early start on the long trip ahead of us. For those of you that don't know, Jackson Hole is located on the far west side of Wyoming...and Devil's tower is on the far east. We traveled over 475 miles this day, which is more than 100 miles further than the total width of the entire state!


For some reason we thought that our trip was going to be pretty flat and boring, but boy were we wrong! The firstleg of the trip was pretty flat, but we soon ran into Bighorn National Forest. The 100 miles through it took about 3 hours because of all the steep mountain roads.


After we got out and through another plain we came to Cody, WY. Cody is named after the Wild West legend Buffalo Bill Cody. This part of Wyoming was unbelievably georgous. I cant't even explain how sweet of a surprise it was. Just past Cody was the Buffalo Bill Dam and Reservoir. If you ever go to Wyoming or Yellowstone, you HAVE to take this drive!!


Down the road from Buffalo Bill Reservoir, we drove through miles of canyons carved by the Shoshone River, sprinkled with the yellow leaves of Aspen trees in Autumn. I thought I-70 through Denver and the rockies was a scenic drive, but this stretch blew it out of the water!


And just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we found out that we HAD to drive through Yellowstone to get to Jackson. We didn't plan on going to Yellowstone until the spring, but we definitely didnt mind it. In Yellowstone, just passing through we saw several herds of buffalo, a herd of elk, prairie dogs, and the beautiful Yellowstone Lake. The buffalo and elk were both so close to our car, we could have reached out and touched them!


When we left the park the sun had set, and we drove through Grand Teton National Park in the dark just before arriving in Jackson. We were home at last, in a place we had only been tourists to a handful of times before.

Since arriving in Jackson, we have been staying in a hotel, trying to recover from our exhausting road trip. The town is so nice even with rainy fall weather, and has an atmosphere you would have to experience to understand. The past two days we have been checking out apartments, and have a couple good leads. Today we went to Jackson Hole Ski Resort to check out the progress on the new aerial tram that opens this year, and to see the Teton mountains for the first time since last march's ski trip with the Snowcats.


Tomorrow we will be touring Blair Place apartments, which is the apartment complex we have thought we would be living at since about July. If all goes well, we will prob sign a lease as soon as possible...then we just need to secure our jobs! Needless to say, we are already counting down the days until Jackson Hole Ski Resort opens, and the real fun begins!! The new tram is almost done, and is going to change Jackson Hole forever!! Check out the progress in the pic below.


I put a counter for opening day on the top right of the blog, in case any of you want to keep tally along with us! :P

Ok, so Adventure was an Understatement...

Wow...well I am finally here in Jackson Hole after a very long and exciting three days! I'm too tired to write about it all in this post so I'm just gonna cover the first two days, and then get to other stuff tomorrow.

We left Lexington, KY at 4am on October first, and planned on driving to Sioux Falls and camping just inside South Dakota. Instead, we kept pushing on and ended up driving 23 hours straight!! We covered 1,223 miles in the first day, and only stopped for food, bathroom breaks, and pictures. We saw a LOT of fields, corn, fields, and corn.

By the time we stopped, we knew it wasn't worth setting up camp or getting a hotel, so we just pulled into a rest stop and tried to catch some shut eye for a couple hours before an early morning appointment with the Badlands. Below is a picture of where we spent the first night...we are in the first car, the silver CRV with the basket on top.

In the morning, we got up early to see the sunrise as we entered Badlands National Park. It was amazing, way cooler than I remembered it being when I went there as a child. I guess you could say I took a LOT of pictures.


After touring the park, we headed to the World Famous (more commonly referred to as sucky) Wall Drug, for some mediocre shopping and a bite to eat. Shortly after lunch we went back into the park, and saw our first buffalo and prairie dogs!


We took the scenic, 20 mile gravel road to the park exit and headed towards Rapid City. A few hours later and we were at Mt. Rushmore looking at one of the most amazing sculptures of all time, you have to see it in person to really understand how sick it is.


On the way down from Mt. Rushmore we saw a profile view of Washington that I didn't know existed, and then took a quick look at the Crazy Horse monument.


This monument is a work in progress, yet oddly enough it still looks identical to the one I saw ten years ago...lol. We were going to go in and spend a few hours there, but then when we found out it was $20 to see a 10% finished rock-with-a-head and we decided to just take a picture!


After all this, we raced to Wyoming to try to get to Devil's Tower by sunset. When we got into Wyoming, I think we literally saw 100+ antelope in the first hour of driving...they were everywhere. We made it to Devil's Tower just at sun down and set up tent as the stars began to light the sky. Oh, and then I realized I had no clue where my sleeping bag was, and pretty much froze to death all night :P At least the tower looked awesome...


That was it for day two, more on day 3 and our first day in Jackson soon to come! You can see more of the pictures from the road trip here.