Skirting the southern edge of the Grand Teton national park lies Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Given its ideal location location location, it’s a touch on the posh & pricey side, and definitely busier than anywhere else we’ve been to so far.

The Grand Tetons mountain range was formed relatively recently (in geological terms). With less erosion, you get more jagged pinnacle-like peaks and a very impressive skyline.

Instead of our usual choice of camping and co-working office, this week we plumped for a motel in Jackson Hole. Not just any motel but the Modern Mountain Motel. Night and day from our go-to Motel 6 standard, I would say more hotel than motel. And having WiFi meant we could work from the hotel room, the lobby, the cafe or the outside area. Oodles of options and no co-working office needed.

It did mean saying goodbye to the Basecamp for a week though. Being such a shit-hot tourist destination means no parking in town for trailers overnight. Which also meant we had to venture into the zoo of a town to find food.

We kept it simple with Snake River Brewing, seated outside (although tbh, not one of my favorite breweries), and Bin22, an open patio seating area that did decent tapas style dishes. It had a wine retail store attached, from which you could choose your wine with no additional corkage. Nice.

Waiting for a table outside Bin22

The housekeeping arrangements at the Modern Mountain were such that they did a deep clean in between guests, and then no maid service during your stay. Which suited us just fine. Clean towels and keurig coffee pods (told you it was posh) were available in unlimited supply. And for the first time in six weeks, I had a hairdryer! (Should have taken a selfie but nope sorry, hair photo fail again).

You probably get the deal by now: Mornings before work involve either hiking, biking, running or SUPing. Being on the edge of the Tetons enabled us to really make the most of it this week.

Starting off with a sunrise run for me…
… While Darren did a SUP in the National Park itself
Next day was a bike ride with the iconic backdrop of the Tetons.
Saw a mother and baby moose but in the distance and not much fun when it’s knee deep with tourists on their lazy wildlife Jeep safari. And the photo turns out like one of those puzzle photos on Facebook where you play spot the moose. Look closely, they are there, promise!
Bit worried when we awoke to clouds the next day but our walk right from Jackson took us above all that. View down to the town.
Our reward at the top, an awesome ridgeline view

And then before we get to Friday (for me the highlight of the week), let’s skip ahead to the weekend, when we did a longer hike into the heart of the mountains up Death Canyon.

Not far from the trailhead was a bear. I’m not going to tease you with another Where’s Wally/Where’s The Bear type pictures as this one wasn’t much in the mood for posing.

No bear. Looking back down the way we’d come, past Phelps lake.
Kept climbing, further into the mountains
On up past the waterfalls
…and relax

Now, back to Friday. So I have been known to get a bit excited about wildlife sightings. Ah but this was no ordinary wildlife sighting, it was a wildlife encounter, no less!

Setting the scene: the start of my trail run and Darren’s SUP. String Lake was so still, this one reminds me of a sideways Christmas tree.
I continued round to Jenny Lake, not quite so still, but still oh so pretty. Track I was on is on the left. Bank covered in undergrowth rises on the right.

So there I was, on a single track trail by the river, doing a trail run shuffle in an attempt to make up a bit of time as I was behind schedule to meet Darren from his morning SUP.

Another trail runner was coming towards me and I stepped aside to let her past. Instead of a ‘thanks’, what I thought I heard uttered from her lips was “Moose”. Twas a bit difficult to make out as she had a face covering on and she wasn’t hanging around, so took me a while to assimilate. My initial thought after “Did she just say Moose?” was “Screw you, not looking too hot yourself”. Which swiftly turned into, “Ooh, maybe she means there’s a moose up ahead somewhere, I should keep an eye out”.

I rounded the corner, eyes scanning the horizon and the trail way ahead. And then I stopped. Right up ahead and nowhere near the horizon was A Moose. Literally right there on the trail in front of me. And still moving. In my direction. On a single track trail.

You don’t have a lot of time to think in these situations. I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t getting past That. It also didn’t seem a good idea to about turn and run back the way I came with the moose following me. I’m not very fast and there’s a lot of ways that could potentially end, most of them not good. Instead, I ran back around the corner and scrambled up the bank. Covered in thick undergrowth and mighty steep, this was not a bank I would normally attempt to climb. But this wasn’t normal circumstances. The adrenaline was flowing, you’ve never seen me move so fast. Albeit with phone in hand at the ready.

And without a care in the world, just a casual sideways glance at me as if to say “funny place to hang out, you don’t look too comfortable precariously balanced up there on that slope”, she just moseyed on past.

I know, I know, too many gratuitous moose shots, but I just can’t help myself
And then she took a hard left to continue down the slope (good job I’d gone up the slope and not down!) to eventually cross the river.

Not to be outdone, Darren reported that he’d seen a family of ducks & ducklings on his SUP outing 🙂