So, the last week of my Jackson trip was FAB! Will and I took a sleigh ride through the elk refuge, which was both thrilling and a little scary! Those animals are huge. And they have very pointy looking antlers! It was amazing seeing them that close though. I'd obviously never been on a sleigh ride and while fun, I'm very glad that is not our main source of transportation these days. It was cold!! And very bumpy! But it was a wonderful experience, something I'm not likely to do again for quite some time.
After the sleigh ride, Will and I went back down to the Gros Ventre Road where we saw all the bison during the summer. Didn't see any buffalo this time but we did see these instead:
Will and I also went snow tubing, finally. Kind of like the ghetto mini-golf experience we had last summer at Snow King, the snow tubing proved to be about the same. That was really disappointing. There were only 3 lanes and the rope tow thing was not set up very well and it was just...ugh. And the ground was pretty much a complete sheet of ice, which was nice for the ride down the tubes, but so not nice when you tried to walk. I almost broke my freaking neck, more than once, and I finally told Will that I was done! We have plenty of snow tubing here on the East Coast at resorts that are much better equipped and a lot less slippery! I did get my picture taken with the biggest snowman I've ever personally seen:
(please ignore that shadow under my nose which makes it look like I'm sporting a moustache!) 
Our last night in Jackson, New Year's Eve, we went to dinner at this place that all the locals rave about - The Gun Barrel Restaurant. Personally, I thought it was just so-so. It was okay but certainly not as good as I expected it to be after all of the bragging everyone was doing. Later that night we met up with one of my internet friends that I've known for over 10 years. I keep in touch with this person a couple of times a year through emails and I just happened to check the email account we chat through the day before I left to go out to Jackson. I asked this person how their wedding went and if they were looking forward to Christmas and I mentioned that I was flying out the next day to Jackson to spend the holidays. I received an email back a few hours later telling me that he and his fiance were flying out to Jackson the following Saturday to spend a week! How freaking crazy is that?!?! I mean of all the places in the world they could've chosen to spend their vacation, they picked Jackson. And it just so happened that I was going to be there too? So, we met up with my friend and his fiance and went to the Tavern bar that night and shared a couple of pitchers of beer and caught up on the last 10 years! It was an excellent time and the band was really good.
My flight out of Jackson the following day was entirely too early! I had to be up by 5:00 but didn't get to bed until 1:30 and then I couldn't sleep. You know how it is when you know you have to be somewhere and you wake up every.thirty.minutes? Ugh! I have decided that I will never fly again unless I can get a window seat. My flight from Salt Lake back to Dulles was absolutely miserable. I was in the middle seat and couldn't get comfortable at all. I couldn't see out the window and kept getting motion sickness and thought I was going to hurl! It was horrible. Add to that the very little sleep I had the night before and I felt like I was going to DIE!
I was so glad to get home! I love Jackson but I really missed my thrift stores! I want to amend my statement that I could move there and be happy. It's beautiful and peaceful and so much fun but I definitely couldn't survive without access to better thrift stores!! I spent the majority of my day yesterday thrifting and it was quite successful! I found lots of goodies which I'll be listing in my store soon. I also went to a great yard/garage-ish sale on Saturday. I was looking up something on Google Friday night and came across an antique store in Gaithersburg, which is a good 50 miles from here, and noticed that they were having a HUGE sale the following day. Will was gone again (go figure eh) so I decided I'd drive over and check out what they had to offer. That was the best sale I'd ever been to! It certainly made up for all of the crappy yard sales I went to last summer! I asked the owner(s) if they were relocating or not and he said they were just closing their store due to their rent going up 25%. They said they'd still run their online business though.
I'm trying to be very productive today and get some items listed in my store but I have so much other stuff I need to be doing as well. Will and I (and the doggies!) leave tomorrow to drive down to SC to spend some time with my family. We'll be doing Christmas (which I have yet to shop for!) and we'll be there for my niece's 2nd birthday. I cannot believe she's 2 already. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were all at the hospital waiting for her arrival. Wasn't she adorable? This was our first picture together!!
So, that's my 2+ week update! It's been insane around here but hopefully after we're back from SC things will slow down a bit! I hope you all are doing well and enjoying 2009 so far!
