Jackson Hole was not what we expected... RV Trip to the Grand Tetons

We're on our way to one of the most recognizable and beautiful areas in the entire country. Confusingly enough, I've heard it go by many names, the Tetons, the Grand Tetons, Jackson, or Jackson Hole, but I guess to simplify it, the town is called Jackson, the mountain range is called the Tetons, and the area sometimes goes by Jackson Hole, as it was coined by early settlers as another word for valley. We're on our way to one of the spots that makes many people's top 10 list, Grand Teton National Park. But first, we had to stop at the little tourist hotspot town of Jackson to see if it's really worth the hype. Well, we made it to Jackson, otherwise known as Jackson Hole. I wonder why it's called Jackson Hole. I've always been curious and I do not know the story. We've been through here one other time in the van back in 2019. We are headed to our very first boondocking spot we've ever done, and it is the most coveted, perhaps overhyped boondocking spot that's out there. And this is the view out our bedroom window tonight. I suppose this is why people get hooked on boondocking. Yeah, for sure. Just finding stuff like this for free. Well, we found our spot on top of the mountain. Chris is already cooking dinner. It's actually lunch. Yeah, we gotta leave. Four o'clock lunch, classic. And it's breathtaking here. I have never experienced anything like this and it will be a memory that I remember forever. So we're headed to the Home Ranch Lot. It's like a visitor center area here in Jackson. They have RV parking and it's just a block or two away from the Jackson Town Square, which is where the famous Antler Arch is. Aaron's been talking about these Antler Arches all morning. I think he's been planning the exact angle of the camera and his selfie that he's gonna get there and it's gonna be epic. I'm actually anticipating big lines, big crowds. So we're probably just gonna walk there and check it out. I don't really care about the picture. You know, I actually looked at RV parks here and as soon as I saw the price tag of like 160 bucks a night, gosh, I said, I don't think so. That's like, that's like New York City prices. And then Jackson is one giant touristy town so everything is gonna be inflated to tourist pricing, including, you know, going out to eat and souvenirs and everything that you do. Your Grand Teton's T-shirt. Exactly. Yeah, hotels, food. This is definitely money galore. There's the arches. Do you see them? Oh, that's, oh, okay, that is not, if you were to ask me to draw a drawing of what I pictured you explaining, it would not look like that. See, it even says Jackson Hole right on the little antlers there. Everything says Jackson Hole, all the T-shirts. Yeah, interesting, huh? Yeah. There's Lee's T's. I heard that's the place to go to get your souvenirs. Right next to the brewery. Did you really hear that? Yeah, I did. It's always fun to drive through a little cute town like this. This one is like lots of people out. It's the end of summer, it's early September, so it's still hot, it's 82 right now, but I feel like the temperature is probably starting to drop and people love being out walking when it's starting to get a little bit cooler. Okay, we need to take a right, I believe, at this light RV parking's in the back. Up there on the left. We're coming at about the worst time. It's one o'clock in the afternoon, but we came from Twin Falls, Idaho, so it's been pretty far. Is it this entrance here? Reserved for buses, RVs, and vehicles. I did hear all of Jackson is free parking, so can't beat that deal. There's some spots right up there, babe. Easy peasy, right? What does that say? Restricted vehicles only, that's awesome. So with the big travel day today, leaving Twin Falls, Idaho, I think it was six hours on Google, you know, which takes seven, eight hours in an RV. And, you know, to get all the way to the boondocking spot and to get up that big, crazy hill, you know, we didn't really wanna stress out about it too much. We're not 100% sure if we're gonna go to the top, stay at the bottom. And then, of course, you know, we wanted to see Jackson here while we're driving through, and it looks kind of fun. So maybe we wanna stay a little bit and check things out. It's kind of got small town Colorado vibes, huh? Well. With the mountains all around and like just a touristy small town. Yeah, it feels really good to be here. And I think Aaron has a number one mission today, which is to explain the whole Jackson, Jackson Hole situation. So I think a little secret to the antler arch is you go to the opposite side of Main Street and they have multiple arches. I think they have four, one on each corner. Oh! So this one's quite a bit less busy than the other two on Main Street. There's these two on the backside. Yeah, also, depending on the sun angle, you might get a better looking photo on a different one. That's very true. I heard that they were collected by Boy Scouts, local Boy Scouts. That's what I heard. So they're actually real antlers? If you're into dancing, the Cowboy Bar. I don't know about that. Teach you how to line dance. Do line dancing there? Two-step is what it's called. They teach you the two-step. Well, a little early. What time is it, 1.43? I bet that, well, it says Jason Mayer Music at 8.30. It's really an exciting town. There's a lot going on. There's tons of shopping. There's tons of restaurants. We've seen a lot of patios. We've seen breweries. Really, anything you feel like, you can eat here. It's lots of options. Aaron's stomach is not growling yet, but I have a feeling it's about to be. Close. The shopping here, just walking a few short blocks, the shopping here is high end. There's a lot of fine jewelry, really nice rugs, boutique stores, that Lee's T-shirt store might be a standout for cheap stuff. Yeah, there's souvenir-y stuff. I don't know if it's cheap. Well, if you want to come buy some nice things, this is the place to shop. Smells high end in there. Everywhere around me. Okay, my thoughts on Jackson slash Jackson Hole. It's got a lot of eating, a lot of shopping, a lot of expensive stuff, and a lot of tourism, I guess. There's a lot of people here. Yeah, very popular. But for us, this isn't quite our vibe. It's not, no. I mean, we could definitely pop in and have lunch somewhere. Yeah, we'd definitely find somewhere to eat, have a drink somewhere. There's some cool rooftop patios or upper deck dining. Yeah. But other than that, I think we'd have just one high-priced meal and head on out. Yeah, but like I said, if you want to go shopping and if you have a vacation budget and you want to spend it, you could have fun. There's some cute stores here. There's some good-looking things. Some quality items. Yeah. And it's fun, because it has the whole Western theme. Western is a hot trend right now, so this is gonna be a good spot to come get some fashionable items for that. It just seems like this has really been built up over the years, and I'd really like to take a visit in the past and see what it was like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, 40, and see how much it's actually grown, because this is one of the largest small towns out there. Yeah. You know, that has that small-town feel, but it's actually, you know, usually the small towns are a couple blocks. This has blocks and blocks and blocks of the shopping and the eating and the, you know, it's. I did, I caught a lot of good smells. Yes. But I think that's gonna do it for us here, and we should just head on into the park and to the boondocking spot, eh? And cook our own lunch. Doesn't that sound exciting? Doesn't that sound better? Kind of getting flashbacks. It's weird. You can't really see it from the road. I kind of picture it being right on the road, but you turn in, it says Bridger-Teton National Forest Access and Toppings Lake Road, and this is all paved. We haven't gotten to the unpaved section yet. We're thinking about staying in the lower Teton section tonight because we're literally getting up first thing in the morning before sunrise and doing a big sightseeing day. And then tomorrow afternoon, we'll go up top and hopefully get a good spot where we can stay for three, four days. Like vans on the left. I see some tents. Not too busy. And then we could kind of go anywhere down here. This is a lot smaller than I remembered. Like if you had a big travel trailer and this was all full, like you wouldn't even be able to swoop around that much. Yeah, it'd be tight. But since- Since it's empty? It's empty, it would be easy for anybody, but we could just, we could back in right there. Along the line? Yep. And that way we could just pull out in the morning. Sounds good. Oh, you wanted to check the Verizon signal down here? I do want to check the Verizon. It's a Wednesday today. Wednesday at 3.30. That's a pretty good time to get to your boondocking spot, isn't it? We get a little bit of Verizon right here. I'm gonna check the speed test. Yeah, it's actually really fast. Is it? Why don't we keep going up the road since it's so early? It's just, it's 10 minutes up the road, right? Sure. Oh, here comes somebody. Oh, so we got lucky. See, that's the thing. When somebody comes down the road, we never would have both been able to go. Okay, I don't want to mess around with that today. Let's just swoop this spot here in the corner. Okay. Do you think he's just scoping it out or he's leaving? It'd be a weird time to leave at 3.30 in the afternoon. You never know somebody's sitch. Like, he might have a reservation inside the park somewhere. Yeah, he might've just been checking it out. Yeah. They gotta get the level app going, babe. I am gonna pull forward and then get closer to the wall, though. Okay, so this is the lower Teton View. Basically just a parking lot. Has a pit toilet in the rear, and that's about it. Maybe room for 10, 15, 20 different rigs, as long as they're parked appropriately. The sun is just hot today. I'm gonna pop my awning out. Gotta get that shade where you can. I haven't talked a lot about this awning yet, but I absolutely love this style of awning. It's legless, it has motion sensors, it has lights on the front and lights on the rear, and it does this really cool tilt down. It's like a two-stage. See how far that tilts down, and it really provides a ton of shade. I like this awning a lot. I think it's a Carefree is the brand of it. It's by far the best awning we've had over the years. So we got a little bit of a peaceful view that way. Nice woods behind us. I don't think it's gonna be too busy today. Very unlevel here. We were slanted way down on the driver's side, so I had to use blocks, ramps, everything on this left side, and we're still not 100% level. I mean, besides it being unlevel, it was super easy. It's dead here, there's nobody here. Yes. Is there any view back there? Kind of, like nature view. It's, that's a boondocking view. You know, we're always trying to get the end site, the corner site, and for this reason, this is kind of a cool spot because you can see the people coming in and out. This is actually a pretty good spot. This is very pleasant. It feels good to be parked. It was a long travel day, and you know, it catches up to you. It's about four o'clock. Yeah, sad as I am to not go to the top right now, I still stand by the decision that this was probably right because it was even a bear to level down here. Well, it makes sense because we know we're leaving early tomorrow morning. Yeah. So if we weren't, it would be a totally different situation. It's good to experience this. We've never stayed down at the lower part before. We've only stayed at the upper part. So it's nice to do both and get a feel of both. And don't worry. Tomorrow's day is gonna be an epic scenic tour around Grand Teton National Park. And then we are gonna make our way to that coveted upper Teton view. And you know, I gotta do some research, but I was looking at the sign and there's a five-day stay limit, but there's something that has to do with after Labor Day. It's back up to 14, but I'm not sure if that counts for up top. It was really hard. You know, it's like reading a street sign, you know, like it's this before that, but not during this or after that time. Some of those signs are so confusing. Yes. I'm getting my knuckles ready for the drive up tomorrow cause they're about to be white. Mm-hmm. ♪ Your lips on my lips ♪ ♪ Started like this ♪ ♪ With one little kiss ♪ ♪ I knew I wanted love ♪ ♪ I knew I wanted you, oh ♪ Well, that was a successful getting up part and getting on the road. It's 6.14 in the morning. You know, getting all those leveling blocks is what takes, I mean, I had so much to level here. It was that off. You know, now that we're on the road, the first lookout point is only six minutes away. That is so close. It's very foggy out today. You know, something we realized last night as we were looking at our old original video of this place is this road was all gravel and horrible. Now it's like paved and smooth and easy. What a difference it makes. Like coming in on gravel washboard, it just kind of like pre-jolts your nerves into activation mode. So coming in on pavement, it's such a better experience, but it does kind of change the ruggedness of it a little bit. ♪♪ And we are the only ones here. This is funny. Can you believe that we're the early birds catching the worm this morning? That's great. So I looked at a top 10 spots to look at sunrise here in the Tetons. And this was like, you know, number three or four. Nice. You can see the Tetons in the background. It's just really foggy. So yeah, the RV parking's on the right. Looks like four or five spots. And then there's 15 on the left there. And the sun's gonna rise to our right. So that should be beautiful. And then hopefully it reflects off the mountains and here we can just walk the dogs and have breakfast. Great. Yeah, this is great. So quiet out here. This is Elk Flat. And I think it's just a big prairie, obviously, at the base of the Tetons. And I can see, I can see animals way out there. I don't know what they are though. They look like, I'm not sure if this is the bison spot or if this is elk or both. It's beautiful outside. It's amazing. I think there's elk or bison out in the prairie. Yeah. Hey, you guys. I'm so worried about these guys jumping out the door. Hey, back. Woo. So it's 6.30. We're gonna walk the dogs. They haven't went to the bathroom yet. They just woke up five minutes ago. We had to get them out of bed, yeah. He's excited. He can smell the animals out there. Oh, it's so fun. ♪ Why'd you look outside yourself when you had ♪ ♪ All of the world inside you? ♪ ♪ You had all of the world inside you? ♪ ♪ Why'd you look outside yourself when you had ♪ ♪ All of the world inside you? ♪ ♪ Why'd you look outside yourself when you had ♪ ♪ All of the world inside you? ♪ ♪ You know you could feel it. ♪ I don't know which way to look towards the sunrise over these nice, beautiful mountains or the Tetons are starting to show. I think it's gonna be a little foggy on the Tetons. I can't believe nobody's here for sunrise. Did you hear that? That was an elk bugle. I heard an elk. Really? Did you hear it when you were, right when you first started going off this way? It's like a bugle. No, but I was looking. It was way off in the distance, but I heard it. Really? It was pretty cool. That'd be really fun if we actually saw some up close. Yeah, I think it is. It's so crisp and cool and the air is so clean and it's just special to be in such a magnificent spot so early before the day's even started. Yeah. ♪♪ Louie, Louie had the time of his life out there. What a great spot. Nobody was here, really. Yeah, we nailed it. Beautiful. I'm really cold. It's really cold. My hand is numb. I can't believe you're in shorts, no gloves. I have my hat, my mittens, my big socks, my like multiple layers and I'm still freezing. It feels good to come in here and warm up for a little bit. Yeah, don't be afraid to open those curtains. I did. I opened one of them. Let's check that view out. A little pink glow. You know you're in a good spot when the photographers come out with their tripod. He put it away right away though. He didn't, I don't think they were getting what they were looking for. He wasn't getting the right light up. Well, first of all, they missed everything. They're about a half hour late. Yeah. But no, it's pretty. It's just, they are a little, they're not popping. Yeah, I mean, based on what we saw yesterday, they might not ever fully pop today. Like fog, smoke, I don't know what that haze is, but they're a little subdued in the background. Well, the sun just peaked up over the mountain just after seven o'clock. I mean, it's been up for a while. We've been here for almost an hour, probably 45 minutes. Some of the just best pictures you could take. What an amazing spot. What an incredible first hour of the day. You know, getting up when the alarm, we don't ever set our alarm, and we did today to get going. And when that first alarm goes off, it's like, oh, your body resists it. Getting up in the freezing cold, your body's resisting. But then you get out here, and it's just a magical hour. Almost to yourself. We're sharing it with a couple of other people, and it is just delightful. Now, if we were leaving the RV and the dogs back at camp, we would've had to get up at like 4.30, walked them, pooped them, gotten ready. This way, we can just get up and go. I was also a really good decision on staying at the lower portion of where we slept last night. Not only was it quicker to get out, but we were driving in the dark then, and I don't drive RVs in the dark on bumpy, rustic roads. So it was nice to really just pull out onto an established pavement, get straight on this highway. Felt very safe with the lights on. And it shaved a lot of time off getting here in the morning, which was our goal. And then in addition to that, we get to have a totally different experience tonight, which I'm already looking forward to that part, too. So next up, we're gonna hit a few more of the turnouts and also go to the Jackson Lodge, just to kind of check it out before hitting the scenic drive. So what's really cool about this park is we're staying right in the middle of a loop between the highway and the scenic drive. And we're just gonna do this big loop and head back to the same spot we stayed last night, except on top. ♪♪♪ Definitely grabbed the chatty line here. I know, I always pick the wrong line. Yeah. She's way faster. Oh, yeah, like six cars just went through. Well, hey, if she gives us information, then at least maybe we'll get some benefit. Yes, let's ask her what her favorite spot is in the park. What's your favorite spot in the National Park? Okay. Good morning. How are you? Good. Do you have your ID? Yes. I would love one. I expected your ID to say Minnesota or something, but you have a definite accent. I'm actually from Minnesota. Are you? Yeah, because my husband is from Minnesota, and he has that same accent. Well, that's such a good ear. But I'm from Florida, so. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay, what's your single favorite spot in the park? Oh, I love Leakes Marina. They have a pizza place there. Oh, they do? Prettiest view in the park. Oh, cool. I think anyway, that's my opinion. Cool. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you. Leakes Marina, where is that? I didn't even, I've never even heard of that. Have you heard of that? I've never heard of Leakes Marina. Okay, this woman, she has a special gift. She knew I was from Minnesota, and she knew we loved pizza. Yeah, weird, huh? Weird. She did want my ID. I look like a rookie without. Ooh, yeah, yep. I think they're cracking down on the passes. So Oxbow Bend Turnout was another one of the spots on the morning sunrise list. And you can see there's a larger, closer view of the Tetons, and there's the water right there. It's pretty, I can imagine, I can see why. But I really liked our turnout, the Elk Flats, better because it had, the Tetons are famous for the jagged T. Yeah, for that just epic line of mountain lines. If you showed somebody a picture of this, I don't think they would exactly know where it was unless they were super familiar. The angle is a unique angle. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely beautiful, but I would say Elk Flats. Is supreme. For the wind, and plus, look at all these people here. This one's really busy. Look at all the people. So I wonder if this is people coming, there's camping inside the park, right? We're really close to. The campsite? The campground. I think it's campground traffic here. That's a good point, this is the closest to the campground, so, cool. That's why you keep me around here. Yeah, we're gonna keep moving. I see steam coming up from the water. Yeah. Little ducks floating. It's pretty. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful shot. That's a beautiful shot. Okay, that's pretty. But it's not the Tetons. I mean, it is, but. Okay, am I clear? Clear. Stereotypical shot of the Tetons. Yeah, it's a beautiful view, I mean, with the water and the close-up view of the Tetons. Super pretty. But you don't see the jagged T. Well, lucky for us, we get to see both. Oh, there's the teeth right there, on the left, the far left. Okay, but not back there. Yep. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better, and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories, and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you wanna get stronger and feel better at any age, check the description below for the links with my new client special, or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.