Welcome to wyoming--with only 500,000 people in the whole state, there are fewer folks in this state than in the Sacramento area.
We're staying in Guernsey State Park, in the eastern hills, near some old mining towns. Guernsey the town is nothing too fab: a lot of trains hauling coal, a military base, and a few bars. But the state park has a large reservoir with lots of campsites around it, and some pretty cliffs. Our site isn't the most spectacular--some have views of the 100-foot cliffs--but it beats most KOAs. Just as we arrive, so does a thunderstorm. Katie is holding her ears because of the loud thunder. Here is the sky to the south of us:
There was so much wind that we pulled our livingroom in. We have no water or electricity at this site (we're dry camping), and unfortunately, we have very little water with us. But we'll only be here two nights, we should be fine. Katie's excited she won't have to take a shower.
So we checked out the beach (the water is way to shallow to swim in, and there's still lightning around), ate dinner with the generator on, then settled in with one light bulb on and read books all evening. Tomorrow we sightsee.
Tuesday, August 2
we are right near the old Oregon Trail, so today we'll go see some historic sites, but first I want to see a couple of buildings here in the state park. The park was built by the CCC in the 30s, and is supposed to have some nice examples of CCC architecture.
Boy were we impressed. We saw the hands-down nicest picnic shelter I've ever seen, and it was built from local stone and trees. Here are some pics:
It happens to be called "the Castle," and I wish it were ours. I'd love to have a cabin like this to live in. Even the pit toilets were amazing:
Apparently, they were dubbed the "million dollar biffy" because they took so long to build.
After seeing the castle, we saw the park's museum, another CCC building, a big one at that. Here is the info on it. I can't believe those guys, who were clearly talented builders (everything's still in amazing shape 70 years later) only made 50 cents a day. That's probably better than some thirld world salaries today.
Next we stopped by the reservior's dam and spillway. There have been lots of thunderstorms lately, maybe that's why there was so much water being released. The sound was so loud we couldn't hear each other talk.
Mark had to venture over to the edge. Here he is before I started getting nervous:
Just past the churning water, it evens out immediately to this, which we thought was pretty:
Okay, here we go to see the sites around here. First stop, Fort Laramie.
Fort Laramie was extremely windy (we got out of the hills and into the plains I guess), but an interesting step back in time, to the 19th century, when the fort was an Indian trading post and then a military post, helping the folks heading west on the Oregon Trail. While we were there, they held a children's program which Katie participated in. Here she is learning to be a soldier:
She did a real good job. Ya know, the enlisted soldiers back in the 1850s here were earning $13/month--almost the same as the CCC guys 80 years later! Turns out that the laundresses had the best deal. At $20/month, they made more than a sargeant would, and had more clout than the officers' wives (more proposals too).
It was hard to leave the fort without buying any books. They had the best selection of western books I have ever seen anywhere, with topics ranging from women's life on the pioneer (there are lots of books about that) to lots of Indian histories, to Oregon Trail diaries, to books about African Americans on the frontier. But we can't buy books each time we stop (sigh), so we headed on, to Register Rock.
Here is Register Rock, where lots of Oregon Trail wagon trains stopped on their journey and many cut their names into the soft rock. There were lots of old names, like these:
And lots of new names and chaos like this:
It was difficult to read many of the names, due to the glaring sunlight and because the surface is so densely written on. I wish we'd had hours to stand and pick out stuff, but it was very hot and we had one more destination: the old wagon ruts. So we took off, after adding our own mark to the rock. You can't write in some protected areas, but most of the rock is still open for scratching. Mark picked a boulder nearby and added Katie's initial. Maybe she'll return someday. In case she does, here it is:
Apparently, the ones who carved their whole names had lots of time to kill.
Our last stop was the old Oregon Trail wagon ruts near Register Rock, just south of Guernsey. The wagons used to fan out along the prairie, but occasionally they had to funnel down to single-file, in gorges like this one. The soft ground seems to have forgotten where the wagons rode, but in this harder rock, you can see how far down the wheels carved. I can't imagine driving on it.
We kept trying to find a spot where our phones would work, so we could at least make reservations for Cheyenne, tomorrow night. Finally we found a spot by the highway where we could make a call, and it was right next to this strange accident:
It looked like a hay truck caught fire. The truck is completely burned out, and the firemen are still trying to get the hay to stop burning. Maybe the driver was smoking a cigarette and threw it out the window...
Well, next stop, Cheyenne. It's the capitol and the biggest city in Wyoming, so it'll be a lot different from Guernsey, but hopefully just as interesting. At least we'll be able to take showers (sorry Katie).