Starting Back

We're still wandering, but now the arrow on our GPS track maps is pointed the other direction as we want to be home in time for the Election to make sure that our two Single Votes Matter in the avalanche of multiple mail-in ballots (if you accept the Right Wing webs' foretellings). And –what the heck– it's Game Night again! From Rock Springs, Wyoming, John joined his virtual group of cybernetic adventurers to defeat another horde of Orcs and even badder guys, storm a castle and bring justice, peace and harmony to a fantasy land known as Faerun. His Warlock's newly mastered Hunger of Hadar spell was a killer!

Okay, here in the real world, we stumbled across another of the roadside Wyoming Historical Markers that said we could see the

real, actual, Oregon Trail. Or at least a well-used spur of it at Sand Springs; the Lander Cutoff is said to be the first federally funded road project west of the Mississippi River, “Built in 1858...to provide shorter route for emigrants.” The public is kept off it, but you can walk along the fence line if you want a closer view of the 162 year old ruts cut by the many, many thousands of prairie schooners of that era, as many as 300 wagon loads every day!  (No wonder the Indians became upset?)

We also discovered the federal Bureau of Land Management

(the original BLM, before violent anarchists co-opted the letters with lies) has one of its many collection and holding centers for wild horses in Rock Spring. Apparently, these horses that run wild in the high desert are worse than feral cats in the eastern cities; their free ranging turpitude results in huge numbers that the land cannot sustain. Instead of letting Nature kill them, many of your tax dollars are spent on government helicopters humanely frightening these beasts into corrals where they are adopted out to people who refuse to control the numbers of these noble steeds by more direct means.

Our two-night stay in Rock Springs featured a side trip to the Flaming Gorge Byway and its dam. The scenery is just impressive! Places like this actually exist!

These overlooked the parking lot    

 We were just driving by; recall that
we had brought our house with us. 

of an ordinary Hampton Inn!

 Less impressive was our civilized Honda C-RV on the sharply stony high hill road that the sign called The Wild Horse Loop. Debbie's little girl My Little Pony fascination with horsey butts took us several hundreds of feet into the wilderness above the town where we found many piles of evidence of horses (a la Mackinac Island's streets), but no actual sightings. We also had to replace all four tires after a jagged stone cut one of ours to shreds. The local guy who stopped to help was towing his own rugged-looking quad machine on a trailer because he'd suffered a similar blowout on burly, knobbed tires.

Then, on to Laramie Wyoming for two nights in a Walmart parking lot. That was less scenic a camp than at the reservoir lake leaving Idaho. We did, however,

visit Snowy Range Pass on our toad's new tires. It was very scenic –and cold. We estimate the air was in the low 30s^oF at the top of thenearly 11,000 foot pass. The wind gusted over 50mph, we're sure. Wind chilled John is sure, anyway; the two-dollar souvenir of a visit to his son in Alaska was ripped off his head and sent flying down the mountainside.   Here's Debbie, refusing to believe the cap is gone forever, running after it madly 

through ankle deep snow well after it was out of sight. The yellow patch of land on the horizon at 2 o'clock is Libby Flats, a couple thousand feet lower and at least 30-degrees warmer. Maybe one of the ranchers will end up with it.

Still in Nebraska, a commercial campground hosted us for two days afterward in Ogallala. John felt the minor thrill he's sure people from other parts of the country feel when they visit Michigan to learn there really is a Kalamazoo. We did laundry and finally visited Chimney Rock and the Scotts Bluff National Monument, the first real waypoints pioneers saw on The Way West. “Finally,” because John had wanted to start our

Western trip here last year and he's the one sitting at the keyboard now.  Chimney Rock's spire was the first indication those travelers had that there really was an end to the miles and miles and miles of grassy plains. But we're coming the other way, so it's the herald of lower elevation, water-boiling normalcy for the Brys.

We also discovered Runza. It's a Nebraska fast food chain, but instead of McBurgers, they serve Runzas, which are pretty much like Michigan Pasties, but without the rutabagas: seasoned beef with cabbage and onions in various configurations on fresh baked rolls.

Deb's not impressed. John is highly favorable; he wants more, and phone-cam'd this quote off a wall near their table.

   

Back at the coach, real life hit us in the face again. Our sewer hose broke open as we were about to leave. You don't need details that we don't want to recall.

We were still in Nebraska, when we found the Miletta Vista Winery at St. Paul. 

It was a Harvest Host location, meaning we camped for free on the assumption we would buy something. They had a dinner for sale along with their wines. It was okay. We didn't find the wine as memorable as their driveway sign. Also it was Debbie's birthday. John didn't bake a cake; he bought a teensy one at a Walmart and stuck a candle on it. Hey, when you're camping, you don't get everything you want!

And finally, we crossed the state line into South Dakota 

only because the US Army Corps of Engineers' Cottonwoods Campground was on that side of the Missouri River at the Gavins Dam. “Just freakin' gorgeous!” exclaims Debbie amid the cottonwoods' bright yellow amid a scattering of other colors.

Then she went outside in thirty degree weather to scrape the bugs off the windshield. John really does appreciate his wife at times.

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