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