Final Park Visit

Aug. 27: Our final day here in the Tetons. We went to Jackson about 30 miles south of here to see what everyone has talked about. Neat little town. The town has tried to keep the feeling of an old west town. At the town square, the four corners have large arches of elk horns. This is rather cool. All around the town are western art galleries. There is a lot of beautiful art in these galleries. There is an old stage coach that will drive you around the town, with a cowboy as your driver. The weather was not good today, we only had 12 hours of sun instead of 14. I don’t know how they can stand it out here. At lunch today we stopped into a local counter hamburger “joint”. The waiter had a constant banter going with all the customers. To get a refill on you drink he would ask the women to kiss him. He even made reference our “non local” accents. The place was full and a couple of people were standing. He asked one man, who was through eating, to get up and let another fellow sit. He had no problems saying what he thought to the customers. In fact, he referenced my straight laced appearance. I can’t imagine that at all. As we left town it began to rain and rain hard, however, a mile down the road no rain and dry as a chip. Speaking of chips, we have seen our share of them out here as we hiked. Driving the highway back to our “home”, we noticed a lot of folks stopped on the side of the road and pointing into the bushes just off the road. Of course we stopped and joined them to see what they had seen. To our surprise it was a large male moose in the brush. He was difficult to see, but every now and then he would raise his head and we could see his antlers. Finally as he ate his way through the brush we got a good look at his head. That made 3 moose that Jan and I have seen on this trip. We made a count while we were out for a walk a while ago on the animals we have seen on this trip. 7 grizzly bears, 2 black bears, 3 moose, 3 wolfs, TOO many buffalo, a weasel, 2 beavers, family of otters, herds of elk and mule deer, lots of pronghorns, 2 marmots, countless ground squirrel and squirrels, herds of big horn sheep and mountain goats.
Today is the last day we will be in the parks from here on it is homeward bound. I don’t regret a thing about this visit to the parks. They have shown us things that we would have never experience or felt if we had not had made this trip. Jan is still alive even though we share such a small living space.
Sad, but looking forward to the trip home.