On the Road-Wyoming

September 11, 2009- Day of Remembrance

Jackson Hole

<>It turns out that Jackson Hole pretty much shuts down after labor day. The stage coach ride, which I was looking forward to was over. The daily shoot-out in the town square at 6 p.m. was over. Our guide told us that by the end of September, it would become a ghost town. It looked pretty crowded to me but every lodging seemed to have a vacancy and we got a good deal on our room. The history, or apocryphal, is quite colorful with shady hotel owners and visiting outlaws. TAhey get a lot of mileage out of the Hollywood movies such as "Shane" that have been made there and Willy Nelson was there at some time.


The best restaurant that we found in JH is a breakfast place called The Bunnery. Its specialty is their flour called OSM which is Oat, Sunflower, Millet.

Driving across Wyoming

When we left Jackson Hole to trave East and South to St. Louis, we found that we had to go back North through the Tetons in order to get on a good road East. The mountains were again beautiful with their nipple points but when we got on the highway to go across the state, it became really boring. By this I mean that you can drive for hours and hours and see nothing but dead looking grassy land and some cows roaming or resting. The cattle are fenced in from the road(fences were not so total in Montana) but in the pastures there is another kind of fence. It looks like separate pieces of fencing that is not secured in the ground but stands up because of protruding pieces In the back allowing it to stand up, rather like a stage prop. I can't find it on Google images so I will have to ask someone. The cattle often congregate against these fake fences. Like Montana, you see some windmill farms as you ride along. But like Montana, it seems totally empty.
UPDATE:Turns out these free standing unattached fences are snow fences. These keep the wind from blowing the snow into unwanted drifts.

Museum of Frontier History

We came upon this museum and it was an actual building on the road and it was marked "free" and we needed a rest stop so we went to visit. It tuned out to be a remarkable place. We did not take the camera because we didn't anything that spectacular. There were old Frontier Wagons. One particularly interesting one was a "sheep wagon" which which was used by Shephards to move with their herd---but David thought that the inside looked just like a modern RV. There was a kitchen stove, hanging post and pans, storage drawers, windows and a bed.

There was a magnificent log looking full service bar with a ;sign by the cash register with the name of a town drunk for whom it was forbidden to be served any alcohol. There was a sign of Stage Coach rules which included abstaining from alcohol unless you would share the bottle around, not smoking cigars in the prescience of ladies. These were suggestions but a man would be put off the coach in the middle of nowhere if "he behaved unchivalrously toward a lady." IT was a;sp forbidden to discuss "stage coach robberies or Indian sightings."

There was replica of a "chemist's shop" a "doctor's office" frontier "home furniture", extensive Indian arrows and arrowheads. There were pictures of hangings and a replica of the hangman's noose.


It turned out that this museum was in actual town called Lander. When I asked the woman in the museum gift shop where I could get a cup of coffee, she told me about 2 places on Main Street. I asked her where Main Street was and she said that I was on it. Sure enough, a while down the road we came upon some stores and we stopped at the supermarket and I got a good coffee. When we left Lander, it was more open spaces until Laramie.

There were lots and lots of trucks on our road and many carried cows or sheep. They may have been going to market, I don't know. There were also many really oversized loads of metal boxes(with no tops) and these trailers holding very long white canvass looking rolled fabric
UPDATE: Turns out that those long white cones and the metal boxes are for another windmilll farm.
Cheyenne

We were going to stop in Laramie for the night but there is a big college football game this weekend(Wyoming and Texas" and the rooms were dear so we went on to Cheyenne, the capital city.Landers, Wyoming