Traveling to Wyoming was never on my bucket list. I was ignorant as to the beauty and majesty that existed there. After deciding to postpone a trip to Italy and Spain, my husband came up with the idea of Wyoming. I’d had been wanting to go glamping so I set out to quickly find a cool place to stay.
I came up with the Rustic Inn at Jackson Hole. They have beautiful luxury cabins along a creek. I decided on staying there after seeing their web cam posted outside facing the creek area. While I have seen video of moose walking through the cabins, that didn’t happen during our visit!
We flew in to the Salt Lake City airport early in the day so that we could enjoy the road trip to Jackson Hole. Once in Jackson, we freshened up and went out to a nice dinner before crashing early!
The altitude hit us hard, so we were tired by 8 pm! We got up early the next morning to enjoy the buffet at our hotel (yes it was actually really good!) Then we headed out to do some exploring! This was on a Friday and Yellowstone National Park was actually closed and only had one more day to the season and that would be the following day.
We drove carefully through the ice and snow, and we worked our way up the mountain – or volcano actually. We had no cell reception and no map! We literally drove for hours. We would stop here and there to take video and enjoy the beauty. we would only see a random car drive by every now and again.
There was even a messed up, eyeless snowman that we decided to help out with some new gummy bear eyeballs and arms! We restored him to his glory and went on our way.
We checked out the maps on our phones once we got back to our hotel that night, and realized we were 10 minutes from Old Faithful. We were left with no choice but to go back again the next day! How could we go home having been so close to the American landmark, but not have actually seen such a thing with our own eyes?
Basically you are standing at 9,000 feet and on top of a volcano/mountain however you’re wanting to look at it… that is boiling water. The altitude kicked our asses! Especially me! I was tired, bloated, had high blood pressure and was constantly looking out for Emergency Rooms in case something happened. I didn’t want to alarm my husband but it was pretty bad. I took an extra blood pressure pill and hoped for the best. Had I bothered to do any research, I could have done a few things to prepare.
We both had bought Iphones right before the trip, so I decided to leave my camera at home and see how good we could do with just the Iphone 10 and 11 models. Had we been better Canon Rebel photographers, the difference may have been bigger.
The hotel we chose had a quaint view of a creek from most of the luxury cabin rentals. Being surrounded by nature was amazing and relaxing. Oh, and that’s the only bear we saw.
Although we never saw a live moose or bear…we had fun trying. The second day we went to Yellowstone they were actually open. As we paid the lady in the entrance booth, I asked her, “Will there be bears today? I need to see bears.” To which she replied, “There are bears, but they are wild.” She responded as if I was hoping to feed Cheetos to the bears by hand. She refuse to accommodate my humor.
We enjoy checking out real estate whenever we go on vacation. The median home price for Jackson, Wyoming was $850,000. Lord. If you compare that to the Houston average of $284,000 you can see the stark comparison. You are paying for the unspoiled beauty. The nature. Old World Americana. Rich scenery. And mainly just being a world away from the trash that has become a part of acceptable city living in today’s world. You do not realize how bad things are on the daily until you remove yourself.
This is what is real and good. Nature and people living in tandem without destroying each other. Living off of the land without destroying and blackening the air.
The majesty was surreal. On the way back to the airport, we had decided to head south through Wyoming in order to see more during our road trip. Hours and hours of beautiful land, with very few people and small towns sprinkled here and there.
The bar was cozy at our hotel. I will not pretend that we drank and partied until the wee hours because we did not. The altitude put us to bed each night by 9 pm.
Towns such as Diamondville, Wyoming were fun to stop briefly and learn about.
The air was clean. The skies were blue. It is the most conservative state in the country. Wyoming has not one Planned Parenthood in sight. Wyoming by far has the lowest abortion rate in the country and the highest gun ownership. One can only hope that as rich liberals move there, they hopefully do not take their crazy, state ruining ideas with them so at least the rest of us have a place to go visit and remember what the country used to be.
My favorite place to go for dinner or drinks in Hughes Landing is actually Del Frisco’s Grille. My personal reasons? The view is the best and it’s more of a quiet, reserved crowd. If I go out with friends, I’m generally not trying to have to scream at whoever I’m with to have a conversation and be heard. I also have a sick and twisted attachment in general to Del Frisco’s because I used to go hang out after work at the Houston Galleria location weekly, as I’d wait for traffic to die down before heading home. I love people watching, the staff is hysterical and it’s nice to have a break in between the never ending work and home grind on the rat wheel of life. (I think this means that I use food and my secret outings as an emotional escape but oh well.)
