Day 38 - Rock Springs to Cokeville, Wyoming - 127 Miles

All around us the sky is dark and threatening with the occasional rumble of thunder in the distance. Rain falls intermittently, sometimes hard, sometimes just a mist. And every once in a while, if we happen to be looking in the right quadrant of the sky, we can see a dazzling spike of lightening strike a nearby ridge or hilltop. Thankfully we're not out on the highway this afternoon, but we are right here at the "Hideout Motel" where things are warm, snug, and inviting.

Perhaps I should explain. Concetta and I are not actually holed up in the Hideout Motel, but we have staked out a nice level spot in their backyard for our evening camp. We're here because we spent so much time on non-driving activities today that we really didn't get very far from last night's camp in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and when it began to rain, the prospect of continuing to drive in worsening conditions didn't sound like a good idea.

At the time, we just happened to be approaching the town of Cokeville, population 547 souls, and we decided to keep an eye out for some sort of camp situation. But it took all of 15 seconds to sail through town and out the other side. We didn't see any camps, but out of the corner of my eye I thought I had seen several RV hookups way out in back of the only Motel in town when we rolled past.

So I asked Concetta how she felt about taking a chance on what might turn out to be just a minimal quality setup. She said to go ahead, so I made a U-turn in the middle of the highway when no cars were in sight, and we rolled back into town. Once we had stopped at the Motel office, I went inside to ask about the possibility of using one of their hookups for the night. In the back of my mind I did consider the thought that maybe the hookups were reserved for folks who actually worked at the Motel, like maids or maintenance guys.

When I entered the office, I discovered that no one was there. I poked my head in a couple of adjacent rooms calling "hello" as I went, but no one appeared. But soon after I heard a noise somewhere in the distance, and soon a very bright and cheery woman, who later told me her name was Angie, came hurrying in from a side room and asked what she could do for me.

"I don't suppose you'd like to rent one of your RV hookups out back for the night," I said.

"On the contrary," Angie said, "I'd love to rent you one of those hookups! And we'd be glad to have you!"

Then Angie gave me the paperwork to fill out and while I was doing that she pumped me for information about RVs. "I'd sure like to sell the Motel someday," she said, "and do some traveling ourselves."

With that opening, of course, I had to tell her the entire story of how we got into traveling by RV; how we'd bought our first one on Craigslist; how we'd taken three fabulous trips in it covering 20,000 miles; and how we used that first RV to decide just what features we wanted in a new one someday.

Angie got all excited about the discussion, and so I went on to tell her how the current RV has more room in it because of the slide-out sides; how the truck has a more powerful V-10 motor and just eats up the hills; and how we were able to get a queen-sized bed in the new one where the old one only had a double.

By the time I had paid for the space, a very reasonable $26.00, and had my receipt, I think I had definitely put some Happy Wanderer ideas in Angie's head. About then, just as I was leaving, her husband, Seth, appeared at the door, and we said hello and shook hands. He seemed like a very nice guy. I hope he is, because I suspect that Angie is going to have something to talk about with him tonight that involves a new plan for the future.

Last night we were in the Rock Springs KOA right beside Interstate 80. It was big, noisy, and closely packed, but it had its good points. It was nice to have full hookups, a well-stocked supplies store should we have needed it, and a location that made it easy to go in any one of several directions. In fact, it would have been very easy to just remain on the Interstate, cruise on into Salt Lake City today, and in a couple of days we'd be in Carson City. But that wasn't quite good enough for the Happy Wanderers.

No, the Wanderers have two more weeks to use up before we need to be home, and we intend to use up every day of those two weeks in seeing America. So we headed not west, but north into the wilds of southwestern Wyoming. We had no plan, no preferred destination for the afternoon, and no particular place that we wanted to visit.

So as the rain pounds the heck out of the roof of the RV and Concetta has put down her book and is starting dinner, I'll tell you what actually happened today on this road which, the roadside signs informed us, was part of the original Oregon Trail.

I'm not sure exactly how far we traveled west on Interstate 80, perhaps no more than 30 miles. But when we came to the turnoff for the town of Granger, and a route sign announcing that Granger was located on Highway 30 to Pocatello, we made our exit and set off in a northwesterly direction.

In our experience when you drive the two-lanes, you end up doing it largely by yourself. Maybe it was the fact that Route 30 went to southeastern Idaho, Pocatello in particular, that made the difference, but for most of the day we had to share Route 30 with 18-wheelers. Most times, we will do whatever is necessary to avoid sharing the highway with these behemoths, but today we had no choice. We were headed to Pocatello and so, evidently, were they.

And the big trucks weren't the only folks who kept us company on our chosen rural route today. Scores of cars, trucks, and swiftly-moving RVs passed us willy-nilly as we kept to our more sedate pace of sixty miles per hour and enjoyed the desert scenery. Towing a fifth-wheel trailer at seventy and seventy-five miles per hour would scare the Hell out of me, but it didn't seem to bother the RVers who roared past us at that speed. I hope they made it safely to wherever they were headed.

So it was, that by the time we reached the first real town after leaving Rock Springs, we decided to pull in, get some gas, and maybe take a little walk to stretch our legs. The town where we stopped was that of Kemmerer, a not too prosperous-looking berg that had devoted much of its life to coal mining.

We never did find out just why prosperity in Kemmerer seemed to be slipping, but when we noticed that so many storefronts had "for sale" signs in their windows, we knew that something was not quite right. Happily for us, the station where we filled the tank was very near a special artifact that I thought Concetta would like to see, so after filling the tank, I pulled onto a vacant piece of ground overlooking the rail line into town, and we walked over to show her my surprise.

Because Concetta had worked for a few years at the B. F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio, we always try to take photos of Goodrich memorabilia and advertising signs if we come across them. My surprise for Concetta was that just down the street from the gas station was yet another building up for sale, one that had a very special sign hanging from it's front facade. The sign was faded and weathered AND upside down, but it was unmistakably a B. F. Goodrich sign.

For a moment we both puzzled over just why the sign would be hung upside down, but we soon realized that the owner of the building where the sign hung had been in the electrical business. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good metal sign, the owner simply re-used it. He turned it upside down, probably because it allowed him to fabricate new support holes in place of the original worn ones, and then he simply painted over the Goodrich wording with some sort of flimsy base coat. After that, he added the wording for his electrical business. Obviously, in the subsequent decades since he had done the repainting, his newer, less durable paint had worn off, and the older, probably baked-on Goodrich paint, now showed through.

After our walk, we regained the RV and headed further into town. It wasn't long before we saw a sign that declared that Kemmerer was the hometown of James Cash Penney, the progenitor of the J.C.Penney Company famous throughout the land since 1902. The sign further advised us to be sure and see the J.C.Penney museum on Pine and Main Streets. We spent quite a few minutes craning our necks looking for Pine Street before we realized that we were actually traveling on Pine Street. We had this epiphany just about the time we approached Main Street, so our sleuthing problem was instantly solved.

It turned out, unfortunately, that the tiny museum, once upon a time the Penney family home, was not open on Sundays. We even had a local shop owner offer to call the museum overseer to see if she'd returned home from church yet. It was the shop owner's opinion that the lady would be happy to come down and open up for us. It was not to be, however, as the kind gentleman was unable to reach the museum lady. So we to had settle for photographing the family home, plus a nice old brick building that was the J.C.Penny company's second location in town, and finally the current J.C.Penney store, and various other oddities in the community of Kemmerer that we found intriguing.

After leaving Kemmerer we had every intention dashing as far north as we could manage in the balance of the day, perhaps even to Montpelier, Idaho, before camping for the night. The map showed a great lack of towns that might host an RV camp, so we really needed to drive to a well populated area that might have one. This sentiment lasted all of about thirty minutes before we came across a sign for Fossil Butte National Monument. After reading the roadside "get acquainted" sign, our prior plans went out the window, and we started looking for the turnoff to Fossil Butte.

This decision turned out to be one of the best we've made on this trip. The museum, just a short distance off the highway, turned out to be a tremendously interesting repository of information on fossils and fossil hunting. Fossil hunting not being a topic about which Concetta and I have done much study, we were just in total awe of both the quantity of beautiful fossil specimens in the museum and the incredible quality of the displays. We loved the helpful friendly nature of the staff as well as the plethora of information on natural history available for purchase.

To give you some background on what we had stumbled over, here's the verbiage on the roadside sign that lured us off the highway and into the museum:

"Fossil Butte is a 50 million year old lake bed and one of the richest fossil resources in the world. It is part of the Green River Formation, a layer of rock composed of laminated limestone, mudstone, and volcanic ash. Complete paleo-ecosystems are preserved in the formation, which is the geologic remnant of the Green River Lake system of the Eocene era. Designated on October 23, 1972, Fossil Butte National Monument encompasses a part of land that was once under Fossil Lake."

"Fossil Lake was the smallest and shortest-lived of the Green River System lakes. At its largest size, the lake covered 932 square miles and existed for approximately three million years. One phenomenon of the Fossil Lake fossils is their density. There are as many as several hundred fossilized fish per square meter in some portions of Fossil Butte. At least thirteen genera are found in the sediments of Fossil Lake, as well as a wide variety of species, from large predators like Gar and Bowfin, to the now extinct Knightia, Diplomystus, and Priscacara."

"Plant and invertebrate records are equally diverse. Evidence of lily pads, horsetails, ferns, palms, and poplar and elm trees exist along Fossil Lake's floodplain and lower elevations. The remains of dragonflies, mosquito larvae, and water striders bear testament to the vibrancy of this freshwater ecosystem. In addition, evidence of freshwater mollusks, snails, crayfish, and shrimp has been found."

"The paleontologists who worked at Fossil Butte have deposited specimens at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C."

Is that impressive or what? No wonder we just couldn't resist a visit. But once we had spent at least an hour at the Fossil Buttes National Monument, most of our travel day had evaporated. The museum was well worth the visit, but now we REALLY had to get moving and find a camp. Naturally, we hadn't even left the Monument and it started to rain. Then it began to rain more determinedly. So, when we came upon the Motel in Cokeville, we jumped at the chance to stay there rather than travel on into the unknown.

And, as I said, everything turned out A-Okay. Now it's just after 7:00 p.m. and though we've been pelted with sometimes heavy rain since we arrived three hours ago, the sun just broke through the cloud cover, perhaps portentous of things to come for us tomorrow, and the absurd-looking, multi-colored Tiki God perched right outside our window is glistening like he's been newly painted.

Tomorrow we'll resume our trek toward Montpelier and Boise, Idaho, leaving the state of Wyoming where we have so very much enjoyed each and every single mile of the state's spectacular scenery, sparkling waters, and multi-hued mountain ranges. And if you decide this summer to venture out in search of our country's western ranch-lands and wild places, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.