By someone who still can’t figure out why GPS devices always die the moment you need them most.
A couple of days ago we landed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, ready for some sort of frontier adventure. And as far as airport views go, Jackson Hole has got to be one of the most fascinating in the world. The airport itself looks like a glorified bus stop with wings, but behind it loom the Tetons—massive jagged mountains staring down at you like bouncers at the gates of heaven. They don’t just welcome you, they practically sneer: “Yeah, try skiing me, sunshine.”
My girlfriend, naturally, whipped out her phone to take a picture, because that’s what she does now. Every. Single. Time. Food comes out? Photo. Dog walks past? Photo. I half expect her to start snapping away when I put socks on. “Posterity,” she says, as though the world desperately needs a documented archive of our sandwiches.
Anyway, on the drive into Jackson itself, it was like rolling into the set of every Western ever made. Cowboy hats, boots, belt buckles the size of hubcaps—it’s all there. Honestly, Wyoming could out-Texas Texas without breaking a sweat. But here’s the odd bit: no one in Jackson seems to actually be from Jackson.
The rental car guy? From Illinois. The museum volunteer? Connecticut. One waiter? Croatia. The woman selling a $600 cowboy hat? South Carolina. Even the guy we asked for directions—because, of course, Mr. GPS clocked out again in the middle of nowhere—turned out to be from Indiana. And, in true Hoosier fashion, he launched into a painfully detailed monologue about going half a mile this way north, a mile that way south of a mangled fence, something about a barn and then east but not too east. By the end of it, we were more lost than when we’d started.
By the looks of things, the whole town is staffed by imports. It’s like an international student exchange program where everyone forgot to go home and just decided to sell cowboy hats instead. I don’t blame them though, this place is beautiful, it’s full of heart and with soul.
I was beginning to wonder if the locals had all been abducted. It’s like stepping into The Twilight Zone, only instead of aliens, you’re surrounded by people called Brad who “just moved here last year.” I’m not entirely convinced anyone from Wyoming actually lives in Wyoming.
As we headed to our accommodation, little did we know we had to drive through a mountain pass. Now, the view was spectacular, but the road itself looked like someone had tried to untangle a rubber band after three pints of whiskey. It wasn’t just left and right, loop after loop—it was up, down, sideways, and occasionally the sensation you’d gone straight to heaven via a detour through hell.
My girlfriend was clamped onto my upper arm for dear life while I tried to keep us alive, and every time a particularly nasty bend came up, she made this noise. A noise that can only be described as the whoop-whoop-huff-huff of a drowning badger that’s just inhaled a lungful of helium. After an hour of this circus, and blood circulation restored to my arm, we finally made it to our AirBnB.
Safe and sound, yes—but in the middle of nowhere. No people, no grocery store, not even a gas station. Just us, silence, and the faint realization that dinner wasn’t going to come from anywhere within a 20-mile radius. Oh well… we’ll see what tomorrow holds.
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A Kings 
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