Wyoming

Monday (Jul 11)

Hit the low 40s last night, my heat actually came on! I’ll bet that’s quite a bit colder than many of my hundreds of neighbors here at Gros Ventre were prepared for in mid-July. It’s gloomy and spitting occasional rain showers this morning. The neighbors I can see out the window look kind of bedraggled.

Popular National Parks are not user-friendly in the summer. They do the best they can, but there’s just too fucking many cars and a lot of clueless drivers. I went to the newer Visitor’s Center down by Moose Junction. evidently the resident moose was on break, because there was no traffic jam at the bridge as there often is. I went in because it’s a cool building and I it has a giant relief map, and I am a sucker for GRM’s!

Grumble… That was a half hour time investment for ten minutes of Visitor’s Center. It’s a such a long walk from the huge parking lot and the person in front of me leaving went into some kind of fugue state at the “T”, neither left nor right, just sitting … forever … Like I way, not user-friendly.

Although a pleasant interlude, that did not solve my major need – coffee!  I motored on up to the Jenny Lake General Store, where I scored 16 oz of Seattle’s Finest and a really quite tasty cinnamon bun lightly warmed in their microwave. I’ve had way worse emergency breakfasts!

The drive out of Tetons on US xx is very pretty. Tetons on your left for awhile, then the road heads east and they’re gone. There is a stretch along a beautiful high meadow meadow complete with river. Eventually the vegetation starts thinning out and you are making your way to Togutee Pass, elev 9660′,

The area wide storm front is snow flurries up here!  38° sez the van thermometer – a few more degrees and I could be in some real weather drama!

Down to the flatlands at 6000′, where the valley widened out into beautiful red rock buttes, then prosperous farming country.

Dubois, where all the good places were closed on Monday, leaving me at an un-good place, whose food is not sitting well at all afterwards.

I’ve picked my spot, but since there choices I am doing the usual second guessing – would a spot at Upper Wind River Campground have been cooler than my spot at Lower Wind River?

it is pretty sweet here actualy. I talked to a nice couple as I was exploring the edge of the river, and turns out they were locals that had camped up at Togutee Pass last night, and the snow and wind and general unpleasantness had driven them down here.

Tuesday

Bugs, bugs, bugs everywhere! They are not mosquitoes, so they are not totally driving me inside. It’s those little stupid mothy creatures that fly around lights and sit in the lee of the wind and all mill around at once when you invade their space. A whole battalion of those little fucks set up housekeeping in the van last evening when I left the door open while I sat at the picnic table and blogged. They aren’t mosquitoes, so what could go wrong? Like the plague of flies I got back in 2013 in Idaho.

Anyway … the heat of the sun woke me up, but when I finally opened the door, under the cottonwood trees, facing the Bighorn River, it was super-pleasantly cool again … with all my little moth friends inside now able to co-mingle their colleagues outside.

The Wind River Canyon is just awesome.But it’s steep and narrow and there aren’t enough pull offs to enjoy it well, and besides you’re sharing it with a busy federal highway blasting up the middle of it. It does not good to pull over and let a line of trucks pass you because there’s another line behind you on a couple of minutes.

Thermopolis was just fucking awesome. A forty minute drive from last night’s home. For the second time on this trip my phone went into a zone where it said “No Service” in the middle of a town, where I had to reboot the whole damn iOS to make it notice it has reception.

The excellent waitress at my crowded lunch spot recommended Tepee Pools as the place to invest in hot spring-wise. She was right! My $10.50 got me an all day pass, so after an hour or so of soaking and sunning I went back to the van, put on my walking shoes and explored Hot Springs Park, which I remember fondly from 2002.

As it happens, my road out of town north to Worland and the railroad tracks both are right on the other side of the river from the Springs. A train went by with 30-40 cars each carrying a single wind turbine blade. Those things are huge, went a very pleasing, aerodynamic (duh) shape, so I let my stoner brain go into neutral and just watched them flow by, the point, then the swelling middle then the smaller base, then another, then … whoops! this one is backwards, base-first! … then back to normal.

After all that hard core relaxing I was so ready to find my spot and get the party started. Even as I was daydreaming about cracking that first beer (I think pulled a Celebration Ale out of the archives :) I parked at the Worland McD’s and got myself a fish sando and a Big Mac to go. My desitination campground is so close that they should still be warm when I get there – yum! :)

Leigh Creek was the first campground and my karma roll continued, as I snagged the last open spot. Oddly, I saw almost no people either that evening or in the morning. After sunset in a bunch, cars for all the sites beyond me piled into the campground. Kids with their headlamps milled around for awhile and trooped back and forth to the bathroom … and they were all gone again in the morning. Working? Rock climbing somewhere?  Who knows.

Did a bit of a moonlight hike up the road … wish I went farther.

Wednesday

Lovely morning, the creek busy outside. On the way out I drove a bit up the road I walked last night, and right around the bend was a very cool looking Wyoming State Fish Hatchery. Old wooden buildings, trees and grass, not like the ginat factoris I’ve seen in California. I wish I’d pressed on another quarter mile to see it in the moonlight last night.

Very pleasant drive through the Bighorns. The top of the mountain campgrounds appeared to be much nicer and have much better energy than did Leigh Creek, so file that away for next time … if only I’d known.

Today’s civilization is Buffalo WY. As civilization goes it was a mixed bag.  The coffee place looked nice enough, but I got a very cranky barrista. Not sure what her problem was, but I’m sure it ain’t good for business. My wifi needs weren’t fulfilled, so onward to the Public Library for a very pleasant hour or so. Finally sandwich shop for dinner to go. Then get the heck out of here. The sandwich was unusually good it turns out! So the scorecard for Buffalo WY is two out of three experiences rated satisfactory!

A little more than 100 miles of as deserted and featureless an interstate as you could hope to find. There are worse things, for instance deserted is waaay better than crowded.

Back to trying to comprehend the rules of the various state park systems. It’s pretty late in the day, so the state employes aren’t manning the gate, so the idea is that I am going to drop $17 down the “iron ranger” (lovely term) without seeing the campground. Nuts to that! I cruise three different campgrounds an end up back at one of the first places I drove past. It’s away from people, has an open feeling, and most importantly has less of the awful dust of the place, endless diesel pickups cruise endless around the dusty, dry gravel roads of the campground loops.  Even so, when I picked my laptop up it had a thin layer of new dust on it.

I picked well, not much traffic, and anyway I was gone from sunset to an hour afterwards doing an excellent moonlight hike along the roads and bikepaths of the park.

Thursday

As described last night, I did not pay at the gate when I entered this park. Nor did I drive the two miles back last night just to pay after I had found my spot. I wrote the check for $17, filled out the required State of Wyoming paperwork and stuck it on my windshield in case they came by. They didn’t.

So now it’s time to go, and I have an ethical dilemma. As I pass gatehouse, now manned during business hours, I drive slowly and look at them to see if they want to check my receipt. That’s certainly how I would run the place. But they don’t, they are perfectly uninterested, so ,,, I fail the ethics test!  I just keep driving. My weak rationalization is that I paid $17 at Boysen Reservior, and really $17 to simply park two nights is pretty good. I am pretty sure I didn’t even use the bathroom at either park.

I retrace my path back down to I-90 and make my way into South Dakota.

First stop Spearfish, a really nice place. I found a very nice coffee shop with a common coffee shop name – Common Grounds. I’ve been through here twice in my adult life, musta been here with my mom back in high school. Spearfish has given me a real nice feeling both times. There is a state college here, which is no doubt part of it.

The Black Hills are overrated in my book. The roads are slow and crowded and the scenery is not near as spectacular as many places places I’ve been within the last week. Why did it seem like a good idea to come through here?

It does feel eastern as opposed to western – small mountains, lots of grass and trees.  I know the Badlands are ahead of me and they definitely feel western, but what I’m doing right now feels like driving through Vermont on a busy weekend. I am pressing on to a particular campground I thought would be available, but I was able to muster the good sense to slow the f— down and see if this place had sites:

I’ve been on a run of nice evenings in nice places, but no place was quite perfect – too windy, neighbors too close, too cramped, too dusty, too many bugs, too boring.

Until this evening. Once I got past the nicotine-reeking check-in dude I I fins myself parked in a perfectly level spot. How often does THAT happen? A twenty foot radius from my picnic table is mowed, then there is thick, green meadow with young Ponderosa (?) pines all the way to my little glimpse of Sheridan Lake. Nearest campers are 50 yards away and not home anyway. As I mentioned above, NO wind – I spread all my maps and they just sit there!  I’ve been visited by maybe two gnats – no mosquitoes, no hordes of mothy things to pop up for days when I turn n the van lights. Low 70’s, high 60’s. I mean really, what else is there? Well phone bars would be nice, but then I would be distracted from all this wonderfulness.

Great 3-ish mile moonlight hike. I was carrying two things – the map of the campground, and a beanie, and I managed to lose them BOTH. I also backtracked and found them both! The map was pretty easy, maybe 80′ of searching, but the beanie (my beige Carhartt beanie, a personal favorite) was all the way back up the highest hill I climbed, maybe 1/3 mile and 300′ of backtracking. Two ways of looking at this: a monumental pain on the ass, OR … even more healthy exercise and a happy ending!