Day 18, Monday, July 4

I’d intended to spend the morning and early afternoon hiking in the Tetons, but apparently so had every family this side of Nevada. I gave up on that idea and decided to go down into Jackson to see what all was going on for the 4th of July. Jackson is an interesting town. Famous for it’s Snow King ski slopes, Jackson is actually much busier with tourists during the summer time than it is during ski season. It was teaming with tourists with obnoxious gobs of money to spend today. Everywhere you looked there were people who’s best friends were their plastic surgeons and stock brokers. The town apparently knows this because everything was priced accordingly. At one point in the afternoon, I was sitting on my motorcycle in the city center park people watching when two women came up to me and asked me about the motorcycle. Turns out that both of them were retired flight attendants for United (after 36 years!) and after I talked with them for a while, one of them, Gloria Robles, offered for me to stay at here place if I were planning for my trip to pass through San Antonio TX. I don’t think I’ll make it to San Antoni on this trip, but I’m certainly going to send her a letter of thanks for her generous offer! They were both really nice ladies!
I had to ask around for a while before I was able to find an affordably priced Mexican restaurant I could go to for dinner. After dinner I went for the fire works. The display was fantastic. Jackson shoots the fireworks off from the slopes of Snow King and the sound of the explosions reflected off of the slope was deafening. The other thing that was really interesting was that because the night was so clear and dark, the light flashes were so bright by contract that it made my eyes water. They put on a display worthy of the "have money" town they are. It was half an hour long and excellent!