Hole up in Jackson Hole
Jan Morris said in a memorable essay that while the population of Wyoming ‘is rather smaller than Coventry’s [its] area is rather larger than the entire United Kingdom’s’.
There are many places worth visiting in Wyoming – the towns of Cheyenne and Cody, for example – and Yosemite National Park is close by. But there’s one town to which America’s great and good make a beeline.
So off the beaten track is Jackson Hole, however, that many richer visitors travel there on their own private jets. It also hosts an annual conference of the Federal Reserve. The place is famous for fine skiing but I was there in the summer and I travelled by rent-a-car as my Gulfstream IV was having its MOT.
Jackson Hole is a delightful little town (with the usual panoply of eateries and gift shops), with, at its centre a leafy square the entrances to which are decorated with huge, twenty-feet high triumphal arches made of naturally shed blanched elk antlers bolted together. The ski lift operates in the summer, so spectacular views can be had without the requirement of walking boots.
I stayed at the Wort, a National Historic Landmark hotel whose Tudor-revival style dates as far back as 1941. With its elegant staircase, dark wood panelling and log fireplaces, it’s a place for which the expression old world charm might have been coined. And, talking of coins, the hotel has a lively bar, the Silver Dollar. The dollar-shaped counter is decorated with 2,000 uncirculated silver coins.
And don’t miss, as if you could, the Grand Tetons – a mountain range that is more Rockies than the Rockies. Hollywood has often come a-courting when it’s wanted a spectacular backdrop, perhaps most memorably in the 1953 Alan Ladd Western Shane (recently reissued on Blu-ray).