100929 – Wyoming is very wide

Wednesday (Sep 29)

My noisy party-animal neighbors from Michigan were gone by the time I got up. Or rather I waited until they were gone to get up.  It wasn’t that they were bad people.  On the contrary, they were very good people, and role models for anyone who wants to be partying hardy in couples mode into their 70’s.  It was just that I didn’t want to deal with them, I was annoyed that their stupid lanterns had trashed my ability to hang out and stargaze from my picnic table.  I busted out the headphones to mask their conversation, but I had no answer for the light pollution.

I got up, ate my leftover breakfast from Big Ed’s all the back in Reno, folded up my bike(*), tried to pack it back in as neatly as it had come out, and off I went!

bike digression

(*) There are two major folds to collapsing the bike, and four other smaller twists. To collapse it:

1. flip the handlebars up so they are in a sort of vertical plane to the front wheel
2. collapse the front column, so the now-rotated handlebars are in a flat plane up against the front wheel
3. flip the pedals up
4. push the seat down
5. rotate the seat 45 degrees (don’t quite get this one, but that’s how it’s done)
6. collapse the main body, front wheel is not next to back wheel, handlebars in the middle.

But I digress .. back to the narrative ….

For me, National Parks are exciting places to be.  I get kind of a celebrity buzz whenever I go into one. This time I’m just hitting the outside edge of Grand Tetons Park, but I still got the buzz.  I drove past a herd of cows for a few minutes before I realized that they were not cows, but bison! The traffic had that Natonal Park rhythm – if you see two cars stopped in the same place, then you should stop probably too, because surely they have spotted a moose or a bear or some natural wonder that you can’t quite see yet!

At Moran Junction, I left Tetons Park and started heading east again.  As part of my master plan for trans-navigating the midwest, I drove almost due north yesterday, essentially unproductive miles in terms of getting to Harvard, but they were very pretty miles! Now I’m back on the track of chunking off eastward miles.

Finally fall colors!  Bright sun-lit yellows against the dark green pines.  Really annoying road construction – about 8 miles of dust and noise and bumpy gravel and big trucks and slowness.  I’m in the Wind River Valley. The Wind River is smaller than the Truckee (i.e. not very big), but it sure has carved out a big beautiful valley.

Big dramatic red bluffs appear on the left.  Then a little after entering the Wind River Indian Reservation, there is a series of delicately colored lavender bluffs that I am now sorry I didn’t stop and photograph.  The prettiest rocks I’ve seen this side of southern Utah.

Onward, to coffee and a donut in Dubois WY.  Also, I got propane – very cheap!  Dubois seemed an odd, lifeless kind of town.  In my imagination it’s got that Cheney vibe …

Next big decision, whether to take the scenic route up through Thermopolis (hot springs!) and the Bighorn Range, Devils Butte, Black Hills, Badlands, all that stuff.  Decided not go that way.  I wouldn’t have much time to enjoy the hot springs or anything else really.  Instead I turned south to take the route through Casper (where I am writing this) at my first and so far only motel of the trip.  This is day four of no shower and many hours of driving, and as you know, driving all day is a sweaty business.  So somewhere in the late afteroon of today I started feeling very funky and like I really couldn’t face my sleeping bag and getting up tomorrow in the same sweaty skin and doing it all again.

My van does have hot shower capability, but it is in the form of a fixture at the back of the van where you stand outside shower yourself with a hose attachment. Perfectly adequate for the wilds, but probably not cool in a Walmart parking lot.

I am finding a complete absence of camping opportunities in central Wyoming.  There are no campgrounds that I can see, and there is no concept of just pulling off into the trees, because there are no trees. So it’s looking like Casper, and the choice between a $30 commercial RV campground or a motel – all my other usual choices are shower-less. I end up going for the cheapest motel I can find ($48).  Even the Days Inn was $83, yikes!

The place felt a little bit sketchy, but it had a nice tv and wifi, so I had a pretty good time.  $48 is a serious overrun of my budget considerations though…  But boy howdy that shower felt good! And the people were actually very nice, their sketchy appearance notwithstanding.