Our trip to Jackson, Wyoming, for Pie’s birthday was the last of our four trips before we hunkered down for COVID-19 quarantining. In fact, our Jackson trip during the first week of March was so close to when COVID-19 made its debut in the United States, that we debated whether we should even go!

We decided to go and reasoned that it would be silly and a bit overreactive to postpone our trip when there was technically very little hype or worry in the news at the time about COVID-19 in the United States (thanks Trump!). I also reasoned that the last place COVID-19 might suddenly hit was the state of Wyoming, so maybe we were better off escaping from a big city like Denver to a mountain town in Wyoming.

Since you’re reading this now, we obviously survived our trip and the coronavirus “panic” didn’t end up hitting Colorado until a week after we returned from our trip. We cut it really close though!

For our four-night Jackson trip, we found the cutest modern cabin at a place called Fireside Resort Cabins. Per the resort’s name, the cabins had plenty of ways to relax fireside, including a cozy gas fireplace inside that became the dachshunds’ best friend, as well as a real fire pit outside.

We had hoped to run into tons of moose in Jackson, but after being in the town for over 24 hours, we still hadn’t seen any! It wasn’t until we were headed out on our first activity in Jackson, snowboarding and skiing at Jackson Hole Ski Resort, that we finally saw one next to the skier shuttle parking lot. This sighting ended up being our only one during our trip. Wah wah.

We had also looked forward to having plenty of snow during our trip, since Jackson had received a record-breaking 126 inches of snow in the first two weeks of 2020… but just like our moose sightings, fresh snow was no where to be seen except a dusting on our final day.

Our day on the mountain snowboarding and skiing was so void of fresh snow and cloud cover that I just wore a sweater, while hubby wore a light jacket. It wasn’t long into our day on the mountain that I became tired of the blinding sunshine, so hubby went off to do some black (difficult) routes from the very top of the mountain while I caught an early start to happy hour.

Our second activity in Jackson was doing a quintessential hike in Grand Teton National Park! We picked the Phelps Lake Trail, which lead us to a lake where we enjoyed bevies and snacks with the prefect, up close view of the Tetons.

The lack of fresh snow and warm weather lead to a very exhausting day of post holing every few steps on the trail. On the other hand, the unusual non-wintery weather ended up being a blessing because we were able to have gorgeous, clear views of the Tetons during our entire hike.

Before we left Jackson, we cruised around downtown Jackson and found out why we hadn’t seen any moose during our trip… they were all dead, with their antlers hung as ornaments in a huge arch in the Town Square.

… just kidding! The Town Square’s famous antler arch is actually made of elk antlers, with the exception of the middle set of antlers with the town’s name on them. While we didn’t get to see much fresh snow or moose in Jackson during our trip, we certainly saw plenty of antlers everywhere we turned and that was fun enough!