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.

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.

Day 37 - Riverton to Rock Springs, Wyoming - 140 Miles

Today we cruised, we stopped, then we cruised some more. In the end we made 140 miles, about twice our usual on this trip, though I wouldn't be able to explain why. It seemed like we stopped every bit as much as we cruised.

I wasn't quite certain exactly what direction we needed to go this morning, even to get out of Riverton, so we made our first stop right away. Part of the reason is that I had forgotten to glance at the map this morning and memorize the route, and part was because we'd seen one of the brown historic interest signs as we left the RV camp telling us that just a mile or so off Riverton's main street was the "1838 mountain man rendezvous site.

Now, I didn't hold out much hope that there would be anything of interest at the rendezvous site other than a graffiti-covered marker, but I thought, what the heck, I have to stop anyway to review our intended destination for the day. So we pulled into the side road and started into the heart of what turned out to be Riverton's wrecking yard heaven, where wrecked cars outnumbered people. Still, we spent the time as we cruised by the hundreds of man's monuments to industrial excess discussing the possibility that someone there might have a windshield for our 1983 Toyota Cressida.

Unfortunately, after we drove the required distance mentioned by the historic interest sign on main street, we found another sign that told us to "Turn right" for the 1838 Rendezvous Site." When we'd gone another couple of blocks and discovered yet another turn, this time a left, we had all but decided to rethink our off-road experience, especially since the road had turned to rutted dirt and gravel at the aforementioned right jog.

At that point, since we didn't have the patience to keep discovering new "legs" of the rendezvous site road, we pulled the rig into a field which had a large enough place to turn around, then parked. I told Concetta we'd just look at the map where we were, then retrace our tracks back to the highway and resume our exit from town.

But Concetta said I really ought to at least get out and photograph the street sign nearest us which sported the alluring name of "Fur Trapper Lane," I told her okay, I'd do it, but then we'd head back. When I got out of the rig to shoot the street sign, I happened to walk a bit to the east and there, right below us, was the open field that was meant to be thought of as the site of the 1838 Rendezvous.

When I had shot the street sign, I got back in the rig and told Concetta that we were going to forge ahead as our quarry was but a hundred yards away. Once there, I got out and strolled around the clearing, shooting photos in all directions, so that I might eventually do the necessary research and perhaps discover where I had miraculously photographed the correct spots.

Though I'm not an expert on the mountain-man rendezvous that took place all those years ago in 1838, I found on the web a discussion of the annual re-enactment that takes place where I was standing. Read on:

"The fun starts with a parade down Main Street in Riverton, followed by opening ceremonies and Native American dancing. Then the 1838 Mountain Man Rendezvous begins with black powder shooting, hawk ‘n knife competitions and numerous seminars centered around the fur trapping era. And ‘Traders Row’ is a great place to bargain for a souvenir."

"The organizers of the 1838 Mountain Man Rendezvous pride themselves on having a “beginners” or “teaching” rendezvous with seminars offered. Family day activities for kids and “nonparticipants" in the rendezvous. There are seminars on fire starting with flint and steel, dutch oven cooking, flint knapping, Teepee set-up and organization, various trapping methods, historical information about the era, and many others."

"The 1838 Mountain Man Rendezvous is open to the public and family friendly. For those “beginner” rendezvousers, who are looking to join a richly rewarding and fun event you will not disappointed! Also, pets are welcome but must be kept on a leash."

Of course, I hadn't yet researched the foregoing, so once I had exhausted the potential shooting angles, and Concetta and I had dragged out the map and decided on our route, we reversed our tour out past the tons of moldering iron, rubber, and glass and regained Riverton's main street. From there it was an easy task to grab Route 789 south and began our sojourn for the day.

Which we did...for all of 15 miles or so, until we entered the town of Hudson and discovered it was Carnival Day and they were having a car show right on main street. Well, not wanting to slight the good people of Hudson, I pulled right over and announced that we just HAD to go photograph the cars.

Concetta presented no counter argument, so we parked in a convenient lot across the street from the festivities, then quickly set out to "stretch our legs."

Save for a couple of seemingly stock Model A Fords, virtually all of the assembled vehicles had been modified or "improved" in some way. Still, it was a beautiful blue-sky day, the cars were sporting a variety of festive colors, and I knew that the camera was just itching to photograph something.

So for the next thirty minutes or more we wandered hither and yon, shooting anything and everything that gleamed under the summer sun, and a couple of times we actually met and introduced ourselves to car owners. The first person we met was Steve Warner who had a lovely purple 1972 Plymouth Duster that he had acquired in Kansas City and had the previous owner ship to him. Steve turned out to be just a great guy to talk with, and I ended up recounting my entire history with my first car, a 1959 Plymouth station wagon that had more than one opportunity to kill me, but thankfully failed.

The second guy, Jake Griffin, was just as easy to talk to, and we spent a few minutes with him. Jake had brought his grandmother's 1951 Plymouth, which was in original condition, and I think Jake intended to keep it that way. I say that because ordinarily Jake produces hot show cars for other folks and was proud to point out that he had "done" the black Camaro that another car-show enthusiast was displaying just a few spaces away. But Jake's granny had sold him the '51 because, she said, he was the only grandchild with any sense.

Finally, and with reluctance, Concetta and I retraced our steps to the RV to resume our journey south. We stopped on the way at the local bakery, just across the street from the car show, to inquire about homemade cookies and bread, but they were already sold out, most likely to the car-show guys and other participants. It was time to get moving as it was mid morning and we hadn't gone twenty miles yet.

Our next stop was the town of Lander, named just as the county in our home state of Nevada, for Frederick Lander, an explorer around the west in the 1840s. In Lander we thought we knew where we were going, but we were wrong. So, since we were lost anyway, we stopped to do a bit of grocery shopping. Once that was accomplished, I accosted the first person we met in the parking lot and asked for directions. The guy knew exactly what we needed to do, and immediately pointed us in the direction from whence we had just come.

Okay, so reaffirming that asking questions is almost always the best thing to do when you're lost, we happily turned the RV back in the direction of the Lander downtown, through which we had just cruised, and set off again. But not for long. Since we had found the cupboard to be bare in the Hudson bakery, I was on the lookout for another bakery as we rolled through Lander. Then, when I saw a sign for a coffee house and bakery on main street, I immediately stopped in a miraculously available parking spot and dashed back to try my hand at homemade cookie gathering.

Once inside the shop I scanned the lighted cases for anything resembling cookies but didn't see any. I wondered if the very quiet and shy young student standing near me at the order counter might know if the bakery did cookies, so I just asked her. Having put shyness in my past decades ago, I find nowadays that it's just best to ask a stranger what you want to know rather than wander around fruitlessly in the dark.

Well, it was obvious that the young student was still in her shy stage of life because I could tell her blood pressure went up by at least 20% and she couldn't bring herself to look in my direction. Finally, she managed to croak out that she didn't know. It took her so long to answer that I had by then noticed a stack of cookies right next to the register, which I helpfully pointed out to my young confidant just in case she should ever need to know. She only managed a nod at that point.

When I got to the register I ordered a dozen cookies and the two clerks looked at each other like I'd just asked them to bake me a cake while I waited. "Ah," the first clerk said, I don't think we have that many." He looked toward the female clerk, but she just shrugged.

I pointed to the cookies on the counter and said, "These all you got?"

The male clerk nodded and agreed that they were.

"Can I have all of them?" I asked.

Both clerks agreed that I could, and said they'd discount the per-cookie price since I was buying all of them.

And that was the sum total of my cookie adventure. After paying for my new lunchtime snack, I dashed back to the rig, and soon we were off in the correct direction toward the famous South Pass and further adventures.

South Pass is famous among people like myself who study the westward migration of the 19th century. Before South Pass was discovered and fully utilized, wagon trains were most often involved in some perilous journeys over the Sierra mountains on their way to the California gold fields, or to the Oregon Territory. Steep and rocky ascents, repeated fordings of raging mountain streams, and the disassembly of wagons so they could be winched up the faces of cliffs were commonplace in the emigrant's quest for the Pacific Coast. But with South Pass the ascent was so gradual and rock free that the emigrants hardly knew they were climbing.

As Concetta and I cruised over South Pass in the opposite direction that the emigrants had made their laboriously slow way up the gradual grade, we enjoyed some of the most open and lovely scenery that we have yet experienced. We stopped often to take photos, read the various historic markers, and enjoyed the incredible cloud-filled vault of the blue sky as it enveloped the beautiful rolling landscape above the historic plains of Wyoming.

Once we reached Rock Springs and Interstate 80 it was time to get back to business, find a camp, and get settled in before the mass of humanity figured out that there wasn't 20 hours of daylight in a travel day. We always try to get settled by 3:00 p.m. if possible, which almost always ensures us a nice space somewhere. Today we arrived a bit late and didn't make the Rock Springs KOA until 4:00 p.m. There the line to check in was already growing, and we were third. But we succeeded in getting a nice spot with a view of coaches on each side, the camp laundry, and the rumbling Interstate to the south. But you know, sometimes you have to grab what you can and savor the times you found a mountain stream to camp beside.

And when you go seeking the very best camp spot on the mountain, beside your favorite stream, or on a lovely beach somewhere, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.

Day 36 - Worland to Riverton, Wyoming - 88 Miles

Wow! Did we have a great day! Part planning, part serendipity, the whole day turned out to be challenging, entertaining, educational, stimulating, delicious, and intoxicating. As an added bonus, it was nicely blessed with kind, friendly people wherever we went.

Last night we stayed in the town of Worland, Wyoming, where our somewhat "rustic" RV camp turned out to be directly across the street from a fabulous and modern museum. Once we had set up camp, we dashed right over to see what the museum had to offer since it advertised that it was open until 5:30 p.m.

We had only to step through the door, and a very nice older gentleman took us under his wing and patiently explained all the museum's exhibit rooms and told us where to find them. Then he turned us loose to explore on our own. The first exhibit room was devoted to some of our favorite sciences of geology, paleontology, and archaeology. Here, there was everything from bones of early bison to fossils from much older plants and animals.

On one exhibit card we learned that: "Primitive primates prospered during the Paleocene Epoch (66-56 million years ago). Researchers in the Fort Union formation have unearthed some of the oldest primate fossils ever found. Scientists around the world recognize their significance. These finds, and the hope of uncovering more, make the Big Horn Basin [of Wyoming] one of the best places on earth to dig for clues about primate evolution. The Fort Union formation is: "a geologic unit containing sandstones, shales, and coal beds in Wyoming, Montana, and parts of adjacent states. In the Powder River Basin, it contains important economic deposits of coal, uranium, and coal-bed methane."

Speaking of coal, Wyoming has been the nation’s leading coal producer since 1986. The state provides about 40% of America’s coal through the top 10 producing mines located in the Powder River Basin. Most Wyoming coal is sub-bituminous, which makes it an attractive choice for power plants because it has less sulfur and burns at around 8,400 to 8,800 BTUs per pound.

Concetta and I had not yet seen much evidence of Wyoming's coal production until we were headed for the Vore Buffalo jump near Sundance, Wyoming. But at one point we passed a vast railroad yard that held almost no other types of railcars except coal hoppers. Later, as we drove back from Sundance, and were headed for the city of Gillette on Interstate 90, we passed the Dry Fork coal producing surface mine and were intrigued to see that the coal seam was perfectly visible from the freeway and looked to be at least twenty-feet thick.

Interestingly, the Dry Fork Mine that we saw provides fuel for the Dry Fork Power Station via a conveyor system approximately one mile in length. The station uses pulverized coal technology and the latest generation of pollution control technologies, which results in very low emissions. Indeed, Concetta and I looked closely at the power station's several exhaust stacks, and we did not see any pollution entering the atmosphere at all.

Design capacity of Dry Fork Station is 422 megawatts; however, the maximum net generation is estimated to be 385 Megawatts. One megawatt of capacity is generally considered to be sufficient electric power for 800 homes, so the Dry Fork Station’s output would theoretically provide enough electricity for 308,000 homes.

The next part of the museum's pre-history exhibit revolved around Native Americans and their relationship with the American Bison, or buffalo. One exhibit that especially impressed me depicted the Indians' technique for caching meat supplies underground pending a future need for the supplies in times of poor hunting. As the exhibit placard explained: "Hunter-gatherers were keenly aware of how uncertain their food supply might be during a harsh winter. Setting aside some meat from a kill was good insurance against a possible shortage."

"Food left for later use had to be protected from scavengers. Large leg bones, shoulder blades, and pelvic bones from earlier kills were stacked around the reserved meat in the cache." In one cache depicted in the exhibit, the placard explained: "The skull of a five-year-old mammoth was placed on the top. Snow and slush packed around the cache pile would freeze into a solid, impenetrable wall." The cache being portrayed in the museum exhibit was found intact, which meant the group never found the need to return for it. Perhaps we can assume good fortune for them.

At this point Concetta and I moved on to the historical section of the museum where we especially enjoyed the section on shepherds and sheep herding. Two things I learned that I had never known before: first, the narrow shepherd's crook that you almost always see in museums was not meant to catch the sheep by the head and neck, but by one foot. I always wondered why the crook was so narrow, and now I know; the second thing we learned was about sheep branding. Sheep aren't branded with a hot branding iron like cattle, they're branded with a smaller implement that is dipped in paint.

Naturally, once again we were treated to a full-scale version of the traditional sheep wagon, something that we had not seen until this trip, and now we somehow see at nearly every museum at which we stop.

Okay, so that's it for last night since you didn't get much of a discussion of what we did yesterday in last night's blog. Today we set off from Worland at around 8:30 a.m., stopped almost immediately to shop at a local grocery store, than were on the road again by 9:40 a.m., with our larder and refrigerator filled.

Our immediate goal for the morning's activity was to take Route 789 south twenty-one miles to Kirby, Wyoming, and visit the almost incongruously small whiskey distiller known as "Wyoming Whiskey." The location of Wyoming Whiskey is so improbable, and so easily missed, that we sailed right past the turnoff without even slowing down. Fortunately, we caught the error immediately and we stopped on the shoulder, reversed direction when no cars appeared on the horizon, and took a second chance at the Kirby turnoff.

If you've ever been to a near ghost town in your life, you can easily visualize Kirby. I think there are actually people living in Kirby, but few of the houses appear to have occupants. Abandoned vehicles abound. Yards are mostly weeds. Streets are mostly dirt. And we saw no actual movement in town other than the couple of cars headed to the distillery.

Okay, we're nothing if not game to try most adventures, big AND small. But truth be known, I did have my doubts at how this particular adventure was going to turn out. We parked the rig across the street since the parking lot for the tasting room was for small cars only, and perhaps only six of them. The across-the-street house didn't appear to have any residents at present to object, so we locked up and walked over to the twenty by twenty-four-foot building that was Wyoming Whiskey's tasting room.

Well, it didn't take too many steps inside the building before we realized that we had nothing to worry about. The two girls on duty, Reilly and Shelby, were just as pleasant as could be, didn't seem to mind if we wandered around, took photos, or played with all the souvenirs for sale. In fact, the two girls went way out of their way to answer all our questions, offer us samples, and just generally make us feel at home.

When we first walked in there was a group of young adults doing a tasting, some of whom were from Munich, Germany. But those folks were winding up their tour and soon left. This meant that Concetta and I were the only customers waiting on the next tour, a span of about 40 minutes. Okay, they were offering their own blend of very nice -- and strong -- black coffee, and I could spend quite a bit of time savoring a few cups. Also, as Concetta and I noticed that they had their own special blend of bourbon-infused maple syrup and barbecue sauce which the girls were more than willing to let us taste. So off to the kitchen we went to do our own "tasting."

About this time the door flew open and an 11 or 12-year-old youngster with a shock of red hair, the color of Lucille Ball's, strode into the room and walked right up to me. Thrusting out his hand, he said, "My name's Luke, what's yours."

Surprised as I could be, I shook hands with him, then said, "I'm Tom. Howya doin'?"

He told me he was doing fine, and then we got into a ten-minute conversation about everything under the sun, and he kept right up as if he'd been talking to adults all his life. At one point I asked him, "well what are you shooting for in your life? You want to be a whiskey distiller, or perhaps you'd like to be a pilot?"

He looked at me for a long moment, perhaps wondering how I would react, but then he said, "farmer." My dad's a farmer, my grandfather was a farmer, and that's what I want to be, a farmer."

I told him I thought that idea was great since Americans would always need someone to grow their food. I asked what he and his dad were growing.

"Corn and soybeans mostly," Luke said.

Then we went on to discuss a farm I'd seen in Iowa that didn't clear the corn stock slash before planting the soybeans and he told me on his farm their combine chewed up the pieces and spit them out as a sort of chaff that gets plowed under. I suppose I could of learned a lot more about farming, but about that time his parents finally came in along with Luke's younger brother who had even more red hair than Luke did.

Before long it was time for tour to begin and Luke and his parents and brother, along with Concetta and me, were the only customers. Shelby was our guide, and, unfortunately Shelby doesn't exactly have a voice made for tour guiding. Much of what she said was lost on the wind, but the gist of how the Wyoming Whiskey distillery came into being has to do with bad luck in the Cattle business due to an attack of Bovine Brucellosis.

With most of the herd gone, the owners decided to start something totally new and whiskey was what they came up with. Now, less than a decade later, Wyoming Whiskey is producing about 2,000 cases on average a year. They have several warehouses full of oak barrels aging into maturity. And they have a impressive crew of eight workers to make it all happen. You just gotta love Americans and their entrepreneurial spirit.

Shelby took us all over the property, upstairs and downstairs, in the fermenting room, in the barrel branding room, in the aging warehouse, in the bottling room, you name it. There didn't appear to be any part of the operation off limits. With Shelby's soft voice, and the noise level in some parts of the operation, I didn't get too much down in my notebook. But I did learn that their mixture is 70% corn mash, 20% wheat, and 10% barley. A barrel of whiskey holds right at 53 gallons, but they only put 52 gallons in them so they don't get explosions. In the barrel room we learned that an empty barrel weighs 100 pounds, and when full of whiskey it weighs a hefty 500 pounds. I also learned that their barrel plugs are made of poplar, and that they drill into the plugs themselves to insert a pipette to sample the contents of a barrel. Thereafter, Shelby said, the hold in the barrel plug seems to seal itself.

Okay, so let's get over to the tasting room and do some, well, tasting. Seriously, the sample of the single-barrel, most expensive, whiskey I found a little too high octane for me. Concetta and I found that the next one down, the two-barrel choice, was much better for us. We put a couple of bottles aside of that choice. After sipping about four different choices we made a selection of everything we wanted to buy, thanked Reilly and Shelby very much for their kind attention and interesting tour, and we made our way back to the RV. It certainly had been an educational -- and tasty -- morning.

As a parting note here, though I didn't realize that Luke and his family were leaving before we had finished with our purchases, Concetta did get a chance to talk to Luke's parents and compliment both boys on their manners, their rapt attentiveness during the tour, and their intelligent questions about the operation. For boys who were, perhaps, just nine and eleven years old, they were just superbly behaved and intelligent kids. I'm sure both will go far in their lives.

Our next quest, after leaving Kirby, was to find a nice spot to pull over and have lunch. The next town on the map looked to be Thermopolis, so we set that town as our destination and set off. So for we'd only gone 21 miles today, but damn we were having a great time.

Thermopolis turned out to be a superb choice for lunch. On the north side of town, the first thing you lay eyes on as you approach is a giant park with a couple of swimming pools, oceans of green grass and forests of trees, and the most spectacular hot pools, of mineral-laden water that you can expect to see outside of Yellowstone Park.

Naturally, when the opportunity arose, we cranked the wheel over, exited Route 789, and rolled into the park entrance -- almost. The first thing we saw as we approached the park entrance is a railroad overpass that was exactly 12 feet above the tarmac. Now I'm pretty sure that our rig will clear that, but I was not willing to bet money on the fact. I put the rig in reverse and backed away from the entrance. It was at that point that Concetta saw the sign that said, "RVs use the park entrance two blocks south."

Well that was a relief. We did get to visit the beautiful park, but we didn't have to trust the guy who measured the overpass to be correct in his measurement. With that we drove the two blocks, rolled right on into the park, pulled into a parking area almost devoid of cars, and found a nice place under a tree for our lunch.

After lunch we set out to walk the hot pools and they were something to see for sure. Maybe not quite as incredible as Yellowstone Park, but not as crowded either. The park had erected a boardwalk all around the pools, and we walked for about forty-five minutes, getting a good buffeting by the wind, but feeling good about the fresh air, the wonderful scenery, and the peaceful nature of the setting. We even got to climb aboard a suspension bridge that spanned the Big Horn River, and walk to the other side, which afforded us a terrific view of the park.

Once our noon respite was over, we once again headed south and finished up in the town of Riverton that sported a Good Sam sanctioned camp. The camp turned out to be a tad down at the heels, but, incredibly, the laundry room here is without a doubt the largest and most well-appointed that we have yet seen. Will wonders never cease?

Tomorrow, I'd like to try seeing the auto collection that is purported to be housed here in Riverton. After that, I don't have a clue where we'll be tomorrow. Sometimes it's just better to be surprised. And if decide to take to the road and see what tomorrow brings, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.

Day 35 - Buffalo to Worland, Wyoming - 90 Miles

Today I would like to make this blog about rocks. I don't know as much as I'd like to about rocks and today, just to tease me, they kept cropping up in the conversation. It's because in Wyoming the highway department has thoughtfully placed geologic road signs along many of it's rural highways to help you identify the rocks alongside which you are driving.

For instance, this morning as we were climbing to the top of Powder River Pass, 9,666 feet above sea level, we passed a sign just before the summit that announced that the rocks at the top were 3 billion years old. Evidently, these rocks called "Gneiss" are some of the oldest rocks on earth.

Naturally, I wondered how Gneiss is formed. I found this answer at https://www.reference.com:

"Gneiss is formed from the high-temperature metamorphism of existing igneous rocks, generally granite or diorite. The rocks that form gneiss are exposed to extreme pressures and temperatures of between 600 and 700 degrees Celsius. These temperatures cause the individual minerals to migrate, forming distinct bands through the rock."

"Gneiss does not have any particular mineral composition, and the term refers only to the banded texture. However, it only forms from igneous rocks and so tends to contain minerals not found in metamorphic rocks formed from sedimentary rock, such as marble. Despite the general appearance of banding, the distinct structures are elongated granular structures, so unlike schist, gneiss does not cleave along its bands."

"The processes that creates gneiss can recreate normal granite if carried on long enough, and gneiss can also form from gabbro or shale. Schist and quartzite may be formed alongside gneiss, along with other types of metamorphic rock formed from igneous rocks."

"Gneiss is very common and actually forms the majority of the Earth's lower crust, so any deep tunneling encounters gneiss. The oldest rocks yet found are gneiss, with the oldest dated to over 4 billion years old, older than most estimates of the beginnings of life on Earth."

Okay, with the 3 billion-year-old rocks at the very tippy top of the mountain you expect the rocks further down the mountain would steadily get older. But that's not what we experienced. As we descended from Powder River Pass the rocks appeared to get younger and younger as evidenced by the highway department informational signs. By the time we reached the valley floor, the last sign we passed said that the rocks were only 200 million years old. So what gives?

The answer is (sort of) simple: Between about 70 and 45 million years ago, this region was compressed by tectonic stresses. This thick block of Earth's crust popped up along thrust faults on its SW and NE sides, folding the younger rock layers underneath. This event is called the Laramide orogeny after the Laramie Mountains in Wyoming. The Bighorn Mountains are one of the largest structures formed at that time, along with the Wind River, Beartooth, Gros Ventre - Tetons, Uinta, and other mountains in the region.

Once upon a time in the 1970s I learned about this phenomena in a Western Nevada College geology class, but this is the first time I can remember seeing it in person. For me, it's pretty hard coming to terms with 3 billion year old rocks, let alone forces in the earth that could shove that layer of rock so hard that it upthrusts, squishes up against younger layers of rock, and then folds them back upon themselves.

Putting the geology aside for a moment, let's go back to the top of Powder River Pass where we had lunch today. Once we had parked at the roadside rest and Concetta had set about preparing lunch, I took the opportunity to wander around a bit. Of course I wanted to get photographs of the Gneiss since I hoped to write about it (photo top left), but I also wanted to get photos of the flora. At an altitude of 9,666 feet, I was immediately surprised to see so many alpine flowers. There were blue ones and red ones and yellow ones and white ones and they all appeared to be pretty robust.

I'm not sure I did them justice, but I had fun trying to include as many colors in one photo as I could. Evidently, noting the general health of the flower and plant life, the top of the world that we encountered at our lunch stop must provide just the right nutrients, water, and temperature for these plants to thrive. Considering it probably gets ten feet of snow and temperatures of minus forty, I'd say the little guys are pretty hardy.

TO BE CONTINUED.......