Wyoming and South

Kris is driving us south and east across the center of the state of Wyoming. We are blessed with a hard tail wind again today which gives us great gas mileage for this big cracker box of a RV.

After supper last night we drove several miles back out of Cody to the Buffalo Bill State Park whick surround the enormous Buffalo Bill Resevoir. We drove to a campsite on our eMap but only found a trailer park on the lake, even though there were state park signs, an entry box for fees and a day use only area that had the best place to camp in the park on the lake. We drove over the place twice figuring what to do and I noticed a truck trail leading below the levee that protected the head of the lake. It looked like a two spot camp sight so I pulled down there and parked in the fluffy weeds and wild sunflowers. Kris protested the spot but I told her we were so out of the way from any main route nobody would care. She says, Well YOU get to deal with whoever bangs on the door in the middle of the night. I said, WHOMever... just kidding. We agreed and shut the RV down and opened the screened sliding windows.

The high winds yesteday were still up when we parked and it was getting dark. The sun had already dropped behind the western mountains but the color was still brushed on the sparse wind whipped clouds and on the two foot seas of the resevoir. The wind must have been blowing from the west here for days. The entire eastern shore as far as I could see was crammed with drift wood of every size and shape. The wood was thrown up on the shore and pushed together in a bustling flotilla of drift wood 20 yards out into the lake. I half wondered, since we were parked at lake level, if we would wake up with wood and water around the RV.

I had my revolver in its usual hidden but reachable spot between me and the side door but the night's whistling wind cradled us in our womb on wheels and we slept like babes.

No one banged on our door or left us a ticket, but when I awoke and hopped from the upper bunk to go pee and Kris said, from bed, drive us to McDonalds, I opened the windshield curtains and climbed into the driver seat, cranked her up and looked forward and saw that a man in a pickup had driven past us and had nearly filled his truck full with driftwood. I waited for him to drive past and we waved to each other. I made a three point turn around and as I drove out, I watched his truck disappear into the trailer park.

We breakfasted in Cody and hit the road. We went to the post office in Thermopolis and mailed out post cards. If you get one you are special to us, if you don't it was obviously lost in the mail, blame the government. We have been crossing south central Wyoming and it is dedolate and deserted. The rivers hold the life and are boxed in with high rock canyons in places so striking you want to take a picture, so we did.

Several hours later, we have left the arid, high risk wildfire center of Wyoming (the only zone considered a fire risk on our trop), fueled up in Laramie and dropped down into Colorado. We've passed thru two good rains and the landscape has changed yet again. The upper Wyoming plains look like western Oklahoma or Kansas whereas we are now on the eastern edge of the Rockies in Colorado and the land is greener and there are great big piles of rocks protruding from huge would-be hay fields. That was all we saw them farm in Wyoming was different types of straw with balers and bales and irrigation on the flatter areas.

Finally, on our return from the on-Earth heaven of western Wyoming, after the Tetons and Yellowstone and central Wyoming where we drove thru a 13 mile beware-of-elk corridor... finally, on Interstate 80, mile marker 276, one hour west of Laramie... finally we see ELK!

I'm driving with a 25 mph tail wind in light rain and Summer, riding shotgun points and screams, Look! I don't at first b/c she "cries wolf" alot but then I look and there they are on the north side, up on a hill overlooking the 4-lane like it's entertaining to them: three dark brown elk, two with big spreading racks so heavy it is no wonder their necks are as great as the girth of their body at the loins.   Mmmm, elk loin.

I have a correction to make on a previous blog. I wrote where Bethany Culley once got a ticket from Nevada Barr on the Natchez Trace. It was my mother who got the ticket and later made a copy of it to give to Mrs. Culley. I also believe my mom got Nevada to sign a copy of one of her books my mom happened to have in the car.