Mormon Row + Exploring Jackson Hole

For the last few days we've been hanging around the Jackson area doing all the fun normal stuff of daily life, washing clothes, getting a little work done, but today we're going to switch things up and explore more of the town. So we kicked off this morning at one of the most famous spots for photos in the Grand Tetons, Mormon Row. So Mormon Row is a Mormon settlement from the early 1900s. Two brothers are kind of credited for building a lot of the buildings around here, John and T.A. Moulton, and they built the two famous barns that you see today. They also built like an irrigation system that I guess is still being used today, a windmill. There's actually a bunch of buildings. This spot's most famous for the two specific barns named after them. One is on where we are right now and the other one's on the other side of the road, and when you google like Mormon Row you'll either see one of those barns. One's a little bit more rounded, one's a bit more like pointy, but they're both really beautiful, and there's all these other like little buildings here. There's like a little outhouse, so it's cool that it's all still standing, and I think people come here just to take a photo, but there's actually some pretty interesting history here too. We've been seeing photos of this place for years, and it's really awesome to finally be here and see it in real life. It's a very, very popular sunrise spot because when you're standing and looking out at the Tetons, the sun rises behind you, so you get this like alpine glow on the Tetons as the sun's rising. Super, super beautiful, but it does get pretty busy, so get here early because there's lots of people with their tripods set up, and it's good to find like your spot so you don't get in anyone's way. Yeah, but it is chilly out here. We got up and out here for the sunrise, so we are going to head into town and grab some coffee. So it's a work day. We've been working at the library for free, or just in the van using our hot spots, but we thought we'd do something a little bit more exciting today and check out a local spot. We're at a place called Picnic, and if you've been to Jackson, you may have heard of this place called Persephone Bakery, and they're owned by the same place, so it's like a sister restaurant. This location of Picnic is a little bit different. It's a little bit more is actually like a little bit out of like the main like town square, so it's less tourists and a lot more locals. Everyone in here is like waving at each other. They all seem to know who each other is, so it's pretty cool. I mean, we're definitely the outsiders, but that's okay. So we got some coffee to start us off while we start working, and then in a little bit, we're going to get some of their delicious looking coffee. That is a hot cakes caramel, they said, which I think they mean hot cakes, the place in Seattle that we love. It's this like molten chocolate place, so it's hot cakes caramel, oatly, which is oat milk is my favorite, latte, and it is like one of the best lattes I've had in a really long time. I try not to get all the sugary lattes all the time, but when I saw they had like hot cakes caramel and they make their own syrups and stuff, I figured it's Thursday, thirsty Thursday. All right, it's brunch time at Picnic, so I got a breakfast burrito, which is my go-to breakfast item. I love trying breakfast burritos wherever we go, and it has the typical breakfast burrito stuff in it, egg, beans, all the fixings, and then Catherine got this sunrise bowl, so it has quinoa, asparagus, some guac, cucumber, watermelon, radish, some kind of sauce, looks delicious. I just love this place, great music, great decor, great food, great coffee. This place is the best. If we lived in Jackson, if we were here longer and not on a budget, we'd be here every single day. All right, the work day is finally over, thank goodness. So we've been staying outside of town in National Forest and then coming into town to use wi-fi, charge stuff. We've been to the library a lot, but we haven't had a chance to actually check out the town. Yeah, so it's been torturous because we want to like go and explore, but we've had to work, so we're really excited to see what the town's all about. From the little we have seen the other day when we came and got ice cream, it's really, really cute. We love all the buildings, like the little town square. Looks like they have some pretty cool shops, so we're gonna go check it out. So in the middle of the town, there's a park, and on each corner of the park, there are these arches made out of elk antlers, and I read on this sign right here that this has been here since 1960, and in every winter, 7,500 elk shed their antlers, and the boys, the local boy scouts go and pick them, and then they sell them in an auction in this park. It's pretty cool. So whenever we go to a new city, we love to find like really cool local souvenir shops. Not the places where like you can get the same shirt at like five other cities or national parks, they just change the name, but like the handmade artsy kind of stuff. So we found this great place called Made, and it's in this really cool alleyway in Jackson, and they have tons of postcards, ornaments, candles, shirts, just so many cool things. We used to collect ornaments when we traveled, but now we don't have a Christmas tree because we live in a van, so we are going to skip the ornaments now, but we did buy some postcards for family, and I was very tempted to buy stickers. It's just a really, really cool place. Apparently, I read this earlier, I think they use mostly U.S. made products and merchants, so helping support local and support people all around the country. And for all you dudes out there, there's a store right across the alleyway there that's owned by the same people. It's called Mountain Dandy, and so they have all kinds of men's souvenirs. They have wallets, hats, belts, I think they had some cologne, things like that, so if you need some souvenirs, check it out. So we were gonna go check out a sunset at this very famous photo spot called Schwabacher Landing, but we were really just feeling like eating some pizza. So we are at Hand Fired Pizza, and it's a cool place because it's inside an old movie theater that's completely redone inside, and it's really cool because you can see them making the pizza over here, but we highly recommend you go check out that photo spot, but it's time to dig in. We got the gluten-free crust because I can't have gluten, so it's a little bit different than if you were to come here and you're not gluten-free. Their normal crust is definitely a little bit puffier looking, but this gluten-free crust is really good, and we just got sauce, cheese, basil, and their homemade sausage, which is awesome. That hit the spot. That place was awesome. We definitely recommend going there, even if you're not like, I need pizza, go because the space is so cool. Just a really cool experience to, one, have pizza, which is awesome, and two, have it in such a cool space. We hope you guys enjoyed our little glimpse at Jackson. We've loved calling this our home base for like the past five-ish days or so. We love that there's such a cool town near National Park. Sometimes that's not the case, so it's been really fun to hang out here. We just love the vibe, the small town feel, just a really neat place. One thing that we didn't get a chance to check out that we're really sad about is this place called Snow King Mountain. It's like a big mountain overlooking the town, and during the winter, it's like a ski area, but during the summer right now, they have like zip lining slides. They have a roller coaster up there, so we're really bummed. It was kind of too late in the day before we realized what time it closed, so we missed it. Yeah, so if you're here in the summer, go there for us and go down the slide thing. It's like, I don't know if tobogganing is the right word, but it's kind of like that. It's that kind of slide, not just like a park slide. It just looks so cool, so that's one regret we have, and we wish we could have showed you guys. But we are gonna head to our spot for the night. We have one more day here tomorrow, and then we're headed north to Yellowstone. Antlers. Elk antlers. Elk antlers. It's like the... I can't say it. It's really hard. It's a tongue twister. Elk antlers. Elk antlers. It's not that hard. Elkinlers. Elkinlers. Elkinlers. New word. Until you do it.