Day 38 - Cokeville, Wyoming to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho - 84 Miles

We fully intended to reach Pocatello, Idaho, this afternoon. When we were about forty minutes away the sky suddenly became very dark, scattered rain started hitting the windshield, and before long it was pelting us with pea-sized raindrops like they were being poured out of a bucket. Unsure whether I wanted to continue to drive all the way to Pocatello in such a deluge, I suggested to Concetta that we pull over and stay in Lava Hot Springs where we saw a KOA sign. She agreed, and we pulled in and stopped.

Of course, we had no sooner paid our camp bill and been issued a campsite, and the heavy rain stopped. To add insult to injury, the sun actually came out to further mock my feeble efforts to predict the weather. I guess we could have decided to drive on, but instead I pulled into our spot, got the rig set up, and then we went walking in the tiny tourist town of Lava Hot Springs just outside our door.

I wanted to walk for a variety of reasons: first of all I wanted to put a few more steps on my pedometer since we hadn't done much walking today; second, I wanted to scout the shops for a new belt since the buckle on the only nice belt I brought with us had disintegrated this morning; and third, well, I didn't discover the third item until we turned the corner and started walking through town and came upon an ice cream shop. I decided that since I've been a good boy today, I deserved at least a couple of scoops. After much deliberation, I chose Huckleberry flavor, which just fit the bill.

Backing up to our point of departure this morning in Cokeville, I'll reaffirm that Angie and Seth's Motel in Cokeville turned out to be just a perfect camp spot for the night. Its grounds were a tad muddy since we were parking on dirt and not any sort of gravel pad, but the camp was ghost-town quiet save the far-off lonely wail of an occasional passing Union Pacific locomotive and train.

Quite a bit of rain fell from the time we arrived yesterday until well into the early morning hours today. Consequently, my shoes got a little muddy as I put away all the gear. Thankfully, by then the sun had emerged and the day promised to be sunny, at least occasionally, with just enough clouds to make photos interesting.

The thing that we didn't know, but soon discovered, as we drove Route 30 from Wyoming into southeastern Idaho, is that we were following one of the well-traveled routes of the pioneers bound for both California and the Oregon Territory in the 1840s, '50s and '60s. Because the route is so historic, it kept us busy reading all the "points of interest" signs along the way.

The first thing we learned early this morning was about a trail feature known as the "Big Hill." I copied this from one of the information signs at a roadside rest: "Looking east across the fields is "Big Hill," one of the most difficult obstacles along the 2,000-mile Oregon/California Trail. The trail crosses the Thomas Fork, north of Bear River and climbs up the steep Sheep Creek Hills. After reaching the summit, the pioneers could briefly glimpse westward to the beautiful Bear River Valley below before undertaking the steep descent of “Big Hill.”

What most people don't know is how difficult it was to go down steep hills with a heavily-laden wagon. An average pioneer's wagon weighed about 1,500 pounds empty. Added to that was all the supplies they needed for a six-month journey, perhaps another 1,500 to 2,000 pounds. If the weight of the wagon on steep hills was not held back, the load could overrun the oxen hitched to the front with disastrous results.

For this reason wagons would be restrained in some fashion to control the descent. If heavy ropes were available, and enough strong men were on hand, wagons could be sometimes partially unloaded and then lowered with ropes. After which the offloaded goods would have to be carried to the bottom of the hill and reloaded on the wagon.

If sturdy trees grew in the area, a substantial log could be cut to a length sufficient to allow it to be lashed to both rear wheels, thus preventing them from turning when the log revolved upward and contacted the wagon box. The wagon would then be skidded to the bottom of the hill fully loaded.

At the time there were also available iron skid "shoes" that could be individually lashed to the rear wheels and a chain attached to the forward end which was affixed or tied to something like a brace in the front of the wagon on each side to keep it from being overrun by the rear wheels. I saw a description once that said the sample skid weighed 35 pounds, was 21 inches long, 4 inches tall, and 4 inches wide.

I think most times the overland pioneers could ill afford the 35 pounds of weight for each store-bought skid when they would be seldom used. They instead relied on finding a timber to serve as a brake which they could temporarily tie to their wheels with rope, then afterward discard allowing it to be used by the next wagon in line.

Our lunch stop today encompassed a visit to the National Oregon/California Trail Center in Montpelier, Idaho. At this wonderful museum, we were treated to a full-scale re-enactment of the steps needed to ready yourself and your family for the journey ahead, as well as a docent-led discussion of what life was like on the overland trail.

Reading the back of our ticket, which is entitled "The Journey," we are advised in advance that "Your wagon train is about to travel from Independence, Missouri, over the plains, across the continental divide, and to the Oregon Territory. The Wagon Master will make sure that you have the necessary provisions and are prepared to meet the challenges of the Oregon/California Trail.

We invite you to also travel with us back in time. The year is 1852. The United States is a young and growing country. There are no "modern conveniences." The economy has been through some hard times. You are concerned with the health and well-being of your family. There is the promise of a new life out in OREGON.

To get the most out of your journey, let your heart and mind go back to 1852. It will take a little effort, but the people you meet will help. Share with them the concerns, joys, and accomplishments of the journey. Welcome to the world of the Oregon/California Trail.

Try to find out what animals were used to pull the wagons, what is salertus, and how did they prepare their meals along the trail.

So, Concetta and I set out to learn just what it was like to be in the market for a wagon and supplies to make our much-anticipated overland journey. Our guides today were Brent Bunn and his cohort, Emma McMurry. Together they took the two of us under their wings, and led us into the 19th century.

Both of our guides mentioned early on that around 18% of the overland pioneers died on the trail. The most common reason was lack of sanitation which lead to polluted water supplies. Water which has been contaminated by human waste can cause Cholera, a very deadly disease. As Brent told us, often people would be feeling fine at breakfast and be dead by dinnertime. The pioneers did not know much about bacteria-born disease and so were powerless to determine how the person had become ill. It was eventually noticed that persons who predominately drank boiled coffee suffered less from diseases, Brent told us, but not before thousands had died along the trial.

The next most common cause of deaths on the trail were from accidents, usually gunshot wounds and being run over by one of the wagons. Children were especially prone to being run over. Gunshot wounds were many times self-inflicted as a man would reach into the wagon to retrieve his weapon by the barrel and it would discharge.

Contrary to most Hollywood westerns, very few pioneers lost their lives because of Native American deprivations or outright attacks. Most wagon train accounts tell about how Indians would try to steal supplies or sometimes lead an oxen off to slaughter. As Brent told us during the tour, in the early years of the wagon trains, settlers even enjoyed a certain degree of friendly exchange of supplies with Indians eager to obtain goods from the east.

As the tour progressed, Brent introduced us to the dry goods supply store where someone outfitting a wagon could obtain all their supplies. From the Museum ticket we learn that the pioneers needed flour, bacon, beans, coffee, sugar, lard, vinegar, salt, pepper, rice, yeast powder, hardtack, and saleratus (baking powder substitute) for provisions. These would be acquired in sufficient quantities to last a trip of five to six months.

They would also need the "hardware" to make the trip possible. For this they needed, in addition to a strong wagon and draft animals sufficient to pull the wagon and to provide a few spares if it could be afforded, two sets of clothing, tent, bedding, tools, leather, nails, candles, matches, pots, pans, cups, plates, utensils, tubs, buckets, butter churn, rope, axe, whetstone, plow, hand tools, axle grease, shotgun, rifle, and ammunition. If affordable, they might also try to take along a milk cow and some chickens.

All of these things had to be combined in logical quantities so as not to overload the wagon, causing a dangerous drain on the draft animals, but sufficient to bring them through the trip. Because of the number of wagon trains on the trail at any given time, most of the local game was either killed by the train ahead of you, or was scared off long before from the vicinity of the trail. Sometimes it became necessary for trains to veer somewhat off course if supplies got low in order to encounter game not depleted by previous wagon trains.

Most wagon trains tried to use oxen to draw their wagons as they were more steadily reliable, able to eat whatever was handy on the trail without harm, and cost less. But they were slow and quite hard to shoe should that become necessary. As our guide, Emma, told us, shoeing an oxen took the combined efforts of many men to accomplish, since oxen are so heavy and, as Emma told us, they can't just lift a leg as they fall over.

The big push when traveling by wagon train to the west coast was the time factor. You had to leave the jumping-off towns along the Missouri River early enough to afford you sufficient time to trek the 2,000 miles and arrive at your destination before winter set in. But you had to leave late enough in the spring so that the trail had mostly dried after the spring rains, and the grass had grown sufficiently tall to provide feed for you stock. Since your wagon train was not the only group counting the days before departure, it became a sort or race to see which train could leave first and not get bogged down in the process. Stock from the early trains were apt to eat up all the forage for quite a distance on both sides of the trail, which forced later trains to move considerable distances off the trail to find forage for their animals.

One thing it was nice to know while on the trail west was the distance traveled for the day. Our guide Emma acquainted us with two methods of calculating distance using the pioneers own wagon wheels. In the first method, a rag was tied to the wheel and someone, usually a child, was assigned the duty of counting how many times in one day the rag made a complete circle. Depending on the wheel size, the rag would go around several hundred times per mile on a good 20-mile travel day. Keeping close track of the distance traveled would allow the pioneers to roughly determine when to expect to see certain geologic features like Independence Rock, or perhaps long-awaited supply points provided by military or fur-trapper forts.

The other method of determining distance traveled was by using a "Roadometer." The roadometer was a 19th-century device like an odometer for measuring mileage on a wagon. The device was invented in 1847 by William Clayton and Orson Pratt, both Mormon pioneers. Clayton measured the left rear wheel of one of the wagons. It was 4 feet 8 inches in diameter, hence 14 feet 8 inches in circumference. Three hundred and sixty rotations of this wheel equaled exactly one mile, “not varying one fraction”. The original model was built by carpenter Appleton Milo Harmon using wooden gears in a wooden housing.

The device was attached to a wagon in such a manner that a "spike" on the revolving wheel would turn a wooden gear one notch each time it revolved. As the wagon traveled, the device would sequence keeping an accurate accounting of distance traveled. The Roadometer was first used on the morning of May 8, 1847, near the site of present-day North Platte, Nebraska.

One topic that Brent acquainted us with was on the subject of flour. We naturally had assumed that everyone would need to take flour along to use in making biscuits, pies, and the like. In reality, the pioneers brought wheat grain with them, and, when needed, the grain was milled in a small hand-crank machine enough to serve their immediate needs. Otherwise, said Brent, the flour would often get wet or become weevil-infested so as to be unusable.

After our visit with Brent and Emma was over, Concetta and I tarried a bit to enjoy the quilting display on the second floor, as well as the antiques display in the basement. We spent just a bit longer in the gift shop where I purchased several chances to win a mountain man-style rifle. After that it was time for lunch back at the RV and a nice cup of black coffee.

The balance of the afternoon was spent enjoying the wonderful green, rolling countryside of southeastern Idaho, though by 2:00 p.m. the skies were beginning to darken, and we feared that more rain was in our future. Still, considering that we left camp this morning with no specific destination in mind other than a wish to make Pocatello by 3:00 p.m., we had a marvelous day. We met some wonderful people, learned some new facts about our country's westward migration, and got to see a part of the United States that we had never seen before. What more could a person want?

Tomorrow we are headed for Pocatello and the famous Fort Hall (reconstructed) that was so often written about by westering pioneers. We also hope to travel on to points westward along the Snake River and the old Oregon Trail. And if you someday get a "hankering" to explore the wonderful old pioneer trails in this great land of ours, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.