Stop 20: Dubois, WY

We had an interesting trip from Rawlings to Dubois (pronounced like "the boys" in "da Bronx"). right out of Rawlings, we crossed the continental divide twice. The area in between did not drain to the Pacific. It was a basin that did not drain. Looking at the map, that area was completely circled by the continental divide.

Continuing on, we reached an area that paralleled the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Badlands Trail (never heard of that one) and the Pony Express route. The reason for that was that this was a really easy route West (compared to the alternatives). I read in a pamphlet about the Oregon Trail that the pioneers reached the continental divide just West of here without realizing that they'd been climbing.

The biggest pioneer related site was about 25 miles East of where we were traveling. We didn't go that way. It's called Independence Rock and they say it looks like Ayres Rock in Austrailia. It was an important landmark along all of the previously mentioned trails and it is carved with pioneers name from ground level up to about 80'.

We did see a couple of historic points along the way.

Split Rock.

I didn't quite get this entire plaque in frame but you can get the gist. Didn't take any pictures of the actual slough because it didn't look like anything unusual.

We also drove by a spot that claimed to be Sacagawea's grave site in Ft. Washakie on the Wind River Indian Reservation (A second spot in Mobridge, SD also makes that claim).

Reaching our campground in Dubois, we're a little concerned about how full the river is (every river that we've seen lately looks like this). We're one row back from the river but, when we sit outside, we can see the surface of the river.

The Wind River at the edge of our campground. Looks kind of full.

Apparently, the campground operators are worried about something. We're guessing that the hose is marking the high water mark.

Someone told us after we'd taken those last pictures that the Wind River's flow was expected to peak at 5am the next morning. We had a pretty heavy storm during the night. I checked at 5am to see if we were sitting in the river. All looked good.

A little later, we went for a walk. That hose from the previous picture was now hung up on a bush downstream.

I took this picture from a bridge the crosses the Wind River just below the campground. Our truck is visible between the 2 trees, in front of the farthest trailer.

I guess I should mention the very large contingent of bikers that have pretty much taken over the campground for the duration of our stay. They are apparently all members of the same military unit and come together in Dubois every Memorial Day weekend to honor their fallen dead. A noble cause that we can't help but respect. But they are loud, party all night and their choppers are reving at every hour of the day. Our visit to Custer, SD at last year's Sturgis bike week wasn't this bad (no bikers in the campground at all).

Later, we visited the Dubois Museum. It's an interesting little museum but we probably learned more from the chatty docent than we did from the museum. She told us that Dubois was originally called Never Sweat (she had a couple of possible explanations for why but they sounded like wild guesses). The U.S. Postmaster General was unwilling to accept the name and renamed the town after Senator Dubois from Idaho. Senator Dubois pronounced his name as one might expect it to be pronounced. The locals were offended but couldn't do much about it other than to mispronounce it as Da Boyz.

The museum includes a row of cabins that illustrated different aspects of early life.

The row of cabins.

The schoolhouse.

The saddle shop.

The foresters shack.

Tie hacks tools. Tie hacks were Scandinavian lumberjacks who created railroad ties.

A Shoshone sheep trap (Shoshone means sheep eater). Bighorns would catch their legs between the branches and he hunters would pounce.

Next, we went for a walk through the town.

This giant elk is at the entrance to our campground.

We saw a lot of these in Jackson, WY last year. Dubois also has at least 2 antler arches.

This is right on the main street. We had to ask a local what it was. This was what they used for cold storage back in the old days. Underground water stayed frozen through most of the summer. Very soon, it's going to reopen as a restaurant. Sounds cool (boo).

Another shot of the entrance to the cold storage / future restaurant.

I'm riding the worlds largest jackalope (inside the local gas station). There's a larger pink fiberglass one outside but it's not real.

As I write this, it's the end of our only full day here. It's downpouring and the bikers are looking pretty bedraggled. I'm sure that the rain will stop in time for us to walk downtown for dinner. I'm equally sure that there's still plenty of party left in those soaking wet bikers.

Tomorrow, we're off to Yellowstone.

-JC-

Stop 19 Rawlins, WY (Hell on Wheels)

Rawlins is another spot that we picked because it was in the right place on the map. We have 600 miles to cover between Estes Park and West Yellowstone. Rawlins is 200 miles along that route. Our next stop, Dubois, WY, is 200 miles further along.

To be honest, we didn't know what we were going to do with ourselves here. On first impression, it's a flat, windy, railroad town. The major employers are the state prison and the oil refinery in the next town over. Sinclair is the home of the Sinclair oil refinery, the "most modern oil refinery in the world" (it still stinks so we're guessing that "modern" must mean that it's computerized and labor efficient).

After looking at the options, we decided to visit the Fort Fred Steele Historical Site, the Carbon County Museum and the Old Frontier Prison (the first Wyoming State Prison).

We were very surprised at the Fort Fred Steele Historical Site. We enjoy a show (now cancelled) called Hell on Wheels. It's about the building of the transcontinental railroad and the title refers to the moving tent city that follows the building of the railroad. We were kind of surprised to find ourselves in the middle of it. Many of the names on plaques are the names of characters in the series. This first couple of pictures illustrate some of the story.

From the Carbon County Museum.

From the Carbon County Museum. We were please to actually see a reference to Hell on Wheels.

Map of the Fort Fred Steele Historical Site.

The bridge tender's house. The wooden bridge over the North Platte River was a weak point and vulnerable to sparks from the trains. Someone had to keep an eye on things.

The newer, less likely to burn, bridge.

The North Platte River.

The actual Fort is pretty much a forest of chimneys.

Chimneys from the officers quarters and the old schoolhouse.

The powder magazine (a long way from the fort).

We spotted this pronghorn antelope at  the Fort Fred Steele Historic Site. A second later, it went over the fence like it was nothing.

After grabbing some lunch, we visited the Carbon County Museum. Like many small museums, it was pretty interesting. We were surprised at an entire room about Thomas Edison inventions. One of the curators had been particularly chatty when we came in and we found him again to ask why.

Apparently, Edison invented a device that he thought would allow him to determine the temperature of the sun but it had to be used during a total eclipse. Rawlins was at ground zero during one such eclipse and Edison and a large team showed up to test the device. The device didn't work but a tenuous relationship with Rawlins was established. While we had the curator's attention he seemed very eager to show us how the various Edison inventions worked.

Our last stop was the Old Frontier Prison.

Exterior of the Old Frontier Prison.

AKA, the old Wyoming State Penitentiary.

Americas most wanted.

They referred to this side of cell block A as the dark side. The cold side might have been another good name.

The dining hall.

This gargoyle overlooked the solitary confinement cells.

The exercise yard for the maximum security prisoners. They had cells for 36 maximum security prisoners. They were supposed to get an hour per day in the yard and only one was allowed in the yard at a time. Must have been a genius who figured that schedule out.

Death row. Apparently, appeal laws were quite different when this prison was open. The average stay on death row was very short.

The old gallows. That square in the floor was a hatch that dropped away. Only a door separates this from the death row cells.

The gas chamber. Again, only a door separates this from the death row cells.

Maximum security.

Tomorrow, we're off to Dubois, WY.

Addendum: I did mean to mention that during out time in the death row, gallows, gas chamber area, a thunder/lightening storm decided to strike. If it wasn't a little bit spooky already, that certainly helped.

-JC-

Stop 18: Estes Park, CO (Rocky Mountain National Park)

There's just no good way to get from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park unless you want to add a hundred miles by backtracking and looping up through Wyoming and down. Any way you go,you are crossing the Rocky Mountains.

After considering several possible routes (one of which we now realize won't even be open until June), we chose the least difficult route. It still had us crossing 3 passes. The steepest, most difficult was right out of Steamboat Springs. Rabbit Ears Pass (9,426') led straight into Muddy Pass (8,722'). That was good because the climb to Muddy after coming down from Rabbit Ears was so slight that we were unaware of it. We turned North at the top of Muddy Pass and drove through miles of high plains. Then we turned East through Cameron Pass (10,276'). Because we were already so high, Cameron wasn't much of an obstacle. These first few photos are from our approach to Cameron Pass.

Kristen was dreading Cameron Pass but, it ended up being a fairly easy pass to get over. As I keep telling her, it's not the altitude but the steepness of the grades that we should be concerned about. Rabbit Ears was much worse than Cameron but, being right out of Steamboat Springs, it was a part of every route under consideration.

Once we were over Cameron, we followed the Cache La Poubre River through a canyon for many, many, many miles, eventually reaching Fort Collins,CO (where people drive very badly).

Looking upstream from our lunch spot along the Cache La Poudre River.

Our lunch spot along the Cache La Poudre River.

Once we were set up at our campground we went out for some gas and groceries. Just behind Safeway, we found the Stanley Hotel, Steven King's inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in his novel, The Shining.  The exterior that was used in the movie is in Mt. Hood, Oregon. We may have to check it out later in this trip.

Our first full day: Rocky Mountain National Park

We pretty much did the park in one day. Fortunately, there are many other things to see in the area.

Just inside the park, we spotted this herd of Rocky Mountain Elk. This group looks to be all male. The Roosevelt Elk in Northern California have all male "bachelor herds" because only the strongest male gets to stay with the females. It appears that Rocky Mountain Elk have the same pattern.

A closeup of the same herd.

A shot of the mountains from the same point where we took the elk pictures.

More mountains.

A very marshy and windy stream.

View from the viewpoint at Many Parks Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Many Parks Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve. This is well above the 10,000' level. The 12,183' pass (the highest major highway in North America) is closed at this point. Back in paragraph 2, I mentioned that one of the routes from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park won't be opened until June. This is that route

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve.

A view of the mountains from the Bear Lake Road.

Another herd of elk. More are scattered all through the trees. This group appears to be all female (though I'd bet that there's a male in there somewhere).

More mountains from Bear Lake Road.

Sprague Lake.

On our way back to the trailer, we stopped and looked around downtown Estes Park. Very nice little town. We thought that we might want to go out for pizza for dinner so we asked one of the shopkeepers about the pizza parlors in the area. He said that we had to try Poppy's on the Riverwalk. We asked if the pizza was good and he said that it was OK but that Poppy's had (listen up Grant) Pliny the Elder on tap. I was sold. The pizza was actually pretty good and our table was right on the river.

Our second full day:

Our campground hosts told us about a beautiful little town, just North of Estes Park, called Glen Haven. Something that we've learned about campground hosts is that they very often host campgrounds in other parts of the country for half of the year. This host has just returned from hosting a park that we've stayed in before in Borrego Springs, CA. She must have missed it when Glen Haven was pretty much wiped off the map by a flood last September.

Not knowing that, we decided to visit Glen Haven on our second day. It's only about 6 1/2 miles North but it's down a road called Devils Road Gulch which has a 15 MPH speed limit down an 10 degree grade with many, many hairpin turns. Reaching the bottom, we found that much of the road was dirt (temporary repairs). Getting to where our GPS indicated the center of town was, we found a couple of buildings standing. Most of the homes on the hills looked like they had suffered some damage.

We turned around and headed back up the hill. After having lunch in our trailer, we decided to walk across the road and take the 4 mile hike around Lake Estes.

Near the start of our hike, looking West towards town.

The Stanley Hotel from the lakeside.

The Stanley Hotel form the lakeside.

After rounding the West end of the lake, we took this shot looking East at the dam. Our RV park is just below the dam.

We've been seeing these birds that look like very large black and white blue jays. We finally identified them as magpies. This is the only picture that I've managed to take of one.

From a high point, that's our RV park on the other side of the dam.

The Stanley Hotel from across the lake.

The spillways from below the dam.

Tomorrow, we head for Rawlins, WY.

Addendum: This happened last night and none of the pictures turned out. Our site seems to be along a route that the elk take every evening. We were sitting out on our deck and took the following photos:

-JC-