Vacation plans (and lack thereof)

Jackson Hole, LinkedIn, and 7 other things worth your time.

Let’s talk vacations. It’s a story with two parts. It’s also an excuse for me to use these kinds of aspirational landscape photos.

Part #1 is from National Geographic, and it has to do with our national parks.

A few months ago, residents of the valley of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, worried the summer tourism season might be a dud.

Now a record 40,000 visitors a day stream through Jackson, a town in the valley and a gateway to neighboring Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. Closed from March 24 to May 18, the parks are now seeing hundreds of thousands of tourists a month.

Jackson is not alone. Mountain towns, beach communities, and vacation destinations throughout the country are facing an influx of visitors—many traveling from virus hotspots—in the middle of a rapidly worsening pandemic.

Anecdotal accounts in Jackson suggest many tourists are surprised to hear COVID-19 exists in the area at all, having mistaken picturesque mountain vistas and wildflower-blanketed meadows for safety.

Par…