Them On Us: Tourists; older Wyomingites; toads and Subarus

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

By Jake Nichols

Ah, tourist season. You can tell by the brake lights.

“A moose!” exclaimed my 10-year-old son Matt. “A real moose!”
So began the Eileen Ogintz story, which appeared across the country last Sunday, from the Allentown Morning Call in Pennsylvania to the Ledger in Lakeland, Florida.
“We screeched to a halt along the side of the road in Grand Teton National Park. Reggie, 8, was equally mesmerized, but 3-year-old Melanie couldn’t quite grasp that we were in the moose’s house – and it wasn’t a zoo.”

Or is it? Check out this excerpt from Edward Rothstein’s Connections piece for the New York Times dated July 14: “Nearly every car [in Jackson Hole] has Wyoming license plates, but you can tell which are not driven by locals. Like mine, they hurriedly pull to the side of the road or even stop dead center, their drivers gawking as thunderously dumb-looking bison amble alongside. At dusk a moose brings traffic to a standstill by grazing on a shrub.”

We thought he was going to say you could pick out the non-natives by the plates that contained a letter. The rest of the article talked about wildlife art in Jackson, like we locals don’t see enough of that already.

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They call it the ‘gray boom’ and they say we aren’t ready for it. By the year 2020, Wyoming will overtake Florida as the nation’s ‘oldest’ state with 20 percent of the population age 65 or older. And Deb Fleming is worried about that. As the director of the Wyoming Geriatric Center at the University of Wyoming, Fleming told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that the state does not have enough home health nurses, public nurses and physicians to deal with the healthcare needs of the elderly.

By the way, the Tribune-Eagle is suing their hometown of Cheyenne over what the paper says was an illegal, closed meeting held by the Building Department Board of Appeals. Industry trade Editor & Publisher had that juicy nugget.

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The nation needs alternative fuel sources, right? And Wyoming has a mess of natural gas, right? So why are we getting the shaft? The Associated Press is reporting Wyoming wholesale natural gas prices are well below the national average, at $9 per thousand cubic feet. Gas elsewhere is selling for up to 13 bucks.
Speaking of natural gas, the famed Star Valley Cheese factory will be reopening soon. Idaho dairyman Gaylan Clayson is in the process of buying the factory which closed in 2005. He told Local News 8 in Idaho his goal right now is to get the plant going again and make mozzarella cheese with local milk.

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The intriguing headline caught our eye: “Why do toads do so well in Jackson Hole?” Uh, because they can?
Actually, it turns out research is underway in Jackson Hole to determine why boreal toads, also called the Western toad, are doing so well along the flanks of the Teton Range, while their populations have been dropping in Colorado. The study is being conducted by Idaho State University Amphibian researcher Peter Murphy.

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Selling Subarus in Jackson Hole is as economically leveraged as hawking air conditioners in Houston. Both are bulletproof. Word out of Fuji Heavy Industries, passed through Automotive Business Review and MarketWatch, is Teton Motors will operate as the exclusive Subaru dealer in Jackson now that Cowboy Motors has changed ownership.

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Camping in the City of Rocks in southern Idaho suddenly got cushier. The area now sports a new RV-friendly campground that makes it easier for families to camp in the area. It was a welcome sight for some climbers who appreciated the hot showers. The story, in the Seattle Intelligencer, used a Jackson Hole couple as an example of thankful campers: “For some in the primitive camping area, like Crystal Wright and Brian Mulvihill of Jackson, Wyo., the weather was too much. They sat out the rest of the soggy [June] morning in their car, watching a movie on their laptop.
That can’t be good for our reputation.
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Them On Us: Tourists; older Wyomingites; toads and Subarus | Planet JH News Article: General News

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