Wyoming Blows

Wyoming, which gave us the gift of shoot-em-up dead-eye Dick Cheney is NOT one of my favorite places. The parts we’ ve seen so far are the high plains where minerals, coal, oil and natural gas are extracted. It’s not pretty. The fact that Wyoming is the least populated state in the USA should tell you something. Last year we had to spend a night in a “campground” in Rock Springs, It was a gravel parking lot behind a group of huge oil storage tanks.. It was the worst place ever.

So the bar was pretty low for the first leg of our trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone with our cousin Margie. Entering Wyoming was deceptively peaceful. An hour later, we were in a raging snowstorm with winds of 40+ mph and gusts of 55+. Nearly every other vehicle on the road was a tractor trailer and we were all getting pushed around.

Jamie was a hero, guiding Rhoda safely through the horrible weather safely for 3+ hours. When we arrived at Little America, our destination for the night, we had to peel Jamie’s white knuckled fingers off the steering wheel. We bought him a big steak and I drank a margarita the size of my head. We all had their famous 75 cent ice cream cones.

While we were at dinner, an enormous bus pulled in right next to us, dwarfing Rhoda. A whole ton of Mennonite kids spilled out. The girls were in lace caps and prairie dresses; the boys in matching blue shirts. Their mother or chaperone wearing her cap and prairie dress walked as far as she could go from the bus and sat at a picnic table, clearly relishing the peace. This morning the bus started up with a roar and belched a big black cloud of dirty diesel and left for parts unknown.

We’re off to Grand Teton, fully expecting to see the glorious Wyoming.