In honor of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am keeping my eyes open for clues about America’s gun cultures as Sandy and I travel from our home in North Carolina to Yellowstone National Park and back. My inaugural post on this series can be found here.

Pardon the interruption, but I just spent 6 nights in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, where cell service/wi-fi is somewhat lacking, which I found to be a blessing and a curse. It highlighted for me how addicted I am to being connected via my phone and computer.

In any event, backtracking somewhat, Days 7 and 8 of our trip took us from Laramie to Jackson, Wyoming via Rock Springs where we met up with my sister and brother-in-law who had traveled from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jackson (or Jackson Hole to some) is not exactly the wild west, with high-end stores dominating the retail area of the town square and real estate prices making San Francisco seem affordable. Our Snake River float tour guide commutes 75 minutes each way to work and the woman working the Wyoming Whiskey tasting room commutes 45 minutes each way, both having been priced out of Jackson.

We of course took a mandatory photo at the elk antler arches marking the corners of George Washington Memorial Park.

I had no specific gun cultures plans going into Jackson. Back in May, a blog reader commented that he worked at a gun/outdoor store in Jackson and it would be great to visit when I was in town. I replied asking him to email me but never heard back and I lost his comment (too many social media messaging systems going and WordPress comments are not searchable!).

As we strolled around Jackson, Sandy and I ventured into JD High Country Outfitters on the Town Square and went upstairs to look for a spotting scope attachment for her iPhone. Imagine my surprise when we got upstairs and I heard someone call out my name. I looked to the right and saw the blog reader, Michael Johnson (who I had never met in person) coming at me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to get his full gun culture background, but even some brief biographical notes suggest a fascinating story.

Michael earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts, which like Wake Forest is in Winston-Salem, NC. Among other things, he is an actor and author and most intriguingly a certified teacher and fight director for the Society of American Fight Directors and created that organization’s knife discipline. You can’t make this stuff up, folks!

Recently, he moved to Jackson, Wyoming from the DC area and retired only to find out he needed something to do in his retirement. Hence his gig selling guns, ammo, and accessories at the outfitter.

Michael has relatives in Charlotte and I am hoping to visit with him later this summer to learn more about how he ended up a gun guy.

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