Commercialized Jackson Hole in the Wall

Yellowstone to Jackson Hole:

After the torture bath, Keith and I continued winding our way through Yellowstone National Park. On our jaunt, we saw buffalo roaming (a sight that Keith was very happy to see), Old Faithful spew water in an upward direction, a snow storm at the top of a high mountain pass, and beautiful landscapes all around us.

However, we were exceptionally pissed off that we didn't see any bears mauling a buffalo. I guess there is always next year.

We exited the park and continued on our way to Jackson Hole, where we were to stay with my friends, Sam and Mareike. We arrived a little on the early side and had some time to kill, so we went to the nearest bar we could find for a beer.

Something I always find entertaining is when you overhear one sentence of a conversation, and in any context the sentence is funny.

For example, on my walk to work in Boston I always passed a veteran homeless shelter, and typically the veterans would hangout outside smoking cigarettes, talking and generally being crude. This one day, while walking around the corner, I heard only a snippet of a conversation, but it was enough to make me laugh out loud. I see this homeless man looking a fellow homeless straight in the eyes, and all I hear is: "...And that is why I am never getting married.."

At the bar in Jackson Hole, Keith and I were reminiscing about college, and as the waitress was passing by, Keith asked, "Was that the night you woke up on the stairwell?" Obviously, the waitress stopped, laughed and said "I heard that." Keith followed it up quickly by adding "it was the stairwell to heaven."

Anyway, the waitress was definitely flirting with us, as evidenced by the "watch out for those stairwells" comment when we were leaving. Little did she know, I have some pretty bad stairwell memories from childhood. Particularly from when my brother and sister would put me in a laundry basket and push me down the stairs, telling me I was "an explorer".

Jackson Hole to Reno, Nevada.