7th July – 17th July 2023
Our shortish drive from Lander to Thermopolis took us through the very picturesque Wind River Canyon. This was fairly low level and didn’t have any significant climbing. We had not paid much heed to altitude changes until recent weeks, but the closer we get to the Rockies, the more it is becoming a preoccupation on our journeys. I don’t know why because Big Dave is a strong beast and has hauled his buddy Tin Can up and down many a moutain pass in the past without incident (and yes, I am touching wood and got my fingers crossed as I write this), but grinding up hills is not our favourite thing. Anyway, the middle of Wind River Canyon seemed a suitable spot for our picnic lunch and after stopping at a pullout we jumped the crash barrier and sat on some handy rocks with a good view and a sheer drop into the river below. It was a nice change from a Walmart carpark, with a frisson of danger to boot. A train even chugged past, completing the scenic vista and, sandwiches consumed, we continued to Thermopolis.
As the name might suggest, Thermopolis is home to numerous natural hot springs. The biggest of these, appropriately named ‘The Big Spring’, is claimed to be the biggest mineral hot spring in the World. I am not entirely convinced by this claim as: A) it didn’t look that big. B) There wasn’t any real data as to whether this was based on area/ouput/depth etc. C) This country loves a biggest/tallest/widest/oldest/heaviest claim and is prone to stretching the truth D) A google search for ‘biggest mineral spring in the world’ comes up with several different answers. But despite all that, hot springs is what this town is all about, oh, and dinosaurs. Our small RV park was right in town and only a short bike ride from all the things we wanted to see. We had three nights here which gave us a couple of days of exploring. The adventure started in the only grocery in store in town. Here the dangerous things were sold in a seperate area. So glad that the cigarettes, AMMO and HANDGUNs are not on the main shelves…!
Several of the hot springs, including The Big Spring, are located on the edge of town in what is now a small state park. This has a small free hot pool (with a 30 minute soak per visit limit) and two commercially run hot pool complexes that charge about $15 for a day pass. The park also has a network of walking trails and a small herd of bison. On our first day we cycled to the hot pools in our hiking gear with our pool gear in a bag and left our bag in a locker and the bikes tied up outside.
We picked a trail that was about 3-4 miles around the park and set off in the blazing midday heat. All of our fellow park visitors opted to take the ‘drive-around-the-park-in-an-air-conditioned-vehicle option’ of sightseeing so we had the trails, and the gritty battle for survival, all to ourselves. Our route didn’t take us through the bison pasture enclosure but we did spy several small dark blobs on the horizon that we we assumed were bison not just big cows. We eventually arrived back at the hot pools, hot and sweaty and not really relishing the prospect of immersing our overheated bodies in hot water, but a plan had been made and we were sticking to it. We had chosen the older of the two outfits, a slightly shabby and outdated complex that was the less busy of the two. The other one, newer and shinier, boasted the Super Star 500 : ‘One of the longest water slides in the world’. I’m sure.
We found the coolest of the pools, bought an iced drink each and settled in for some relaxation. Our reverie was interupted by enforced conversation from a local lady. Deeply tanned and about 70 years old, she and her husband had season tickets to the pools and came every day. After about half an hour of her talking with her we were able to tease out the finer complexities of her character and beliefs. These I can sum up in two words: conspiracy theorist. She did not notice that normal two way converstation fell by the wayside when she started mentioning’ the poison injections’ and that ‘the government fabricated the pandemic to control us’ etc. We held our tongues, knowning no debate was possible. Her husband was strangly quiet too. I wonder what he thought about it all?
Eventually we extracted ourselves from the craziness and now that we had cooled down, physically if not intellectually, we managed to sample some of the warmer pools before we called it a day and headed home. That evening we headed to the small brewery in town for the usual cultural experience of beers and a burger. I actually had a ‘french dip’ which, for my non American friends, is a sliced beef and caramelised onion baguette-style sandwich served with a small pot of beefy stock juice that you dip the sandwich in. Bloomin’ delicious! As usual we sat up at the bar and had a very lovely chat with a younger couple who were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary having gleefully left their kids with the grandparents. There was a tense moment towards the end of the evening as another couple that was sat further down the bar got up to leave and the guy challenged the couple sat next to us on the other side. “Do I know you?” he asked in an aggressive tone “and if I don’t then, why have you been staring at me all night?” . They were flustered and gracefully, although unecessarily, apologetic and he huffed off. No they had not been staring, just facing that way and being normal. He was just being a total a*se. It is exchanges like that that could deteriorate into a bit of pushing and shoving most places in the world, but in this country, and in this state in particular, where apparently everyone is armed (although we have yet to see any evidence), outcomes can potentially be very different.
The next day, we lurched back into the baking heat and cycled across town to the dinosaur museum. This is a fairly epic collection of fossil samples and dinosaur skeletons in what is essentially a big shed. A rancher here found some dinosaur fossils on his land and a rich German fossil enthusiast bought the land, leased the grazing back to the rancher and started excavating specimens. He is partly in it for the science, establishing the museum and a research facility, but it seems that his other significant motivator is money as he sells some of his specimens to the highest bidders at auctions. This annoys the scientists in his team and it sounds like they are resigning in their droves. We did the museum tour then paid a bit extra to have a guided tour of a dig site. A young college student doing a summer job confidently drove a minvan full of us up the hill at moderate speed along a winding gravel road with steep drop-offs. Once we arrived safely at the top he expertly toured us through the dig site, pointing out fossilised footprints of a few different types of dinosaurs, a few in-situ bones and some excavated bones and teeth, giving us lots of geological facts and figures and generally doing an excellent job. Once our brains were full of dinosaur facts and the sun had once again cooked our souls we headed back down the hill and found an icecream kiosk co-located with a mini-golf course. What’s not to love about that combo on a warm day?? Nick won.
Another short hop took us from Thermopolis to Ten Sleep. This tiny settlement at the base of the Big Horn Mountains has an unusual but logical name. It was originally named Sackett, after the Colonel who mapped the area but trappers later named it Ten Sleep after the Indian method of determining distance. The area was ‘ten sleeps’ travelling time from the settlement of Yellowstone and ten sleeps from Fort. Laramie. Simples! We had booked three nights here, which on the face of it was probably two nights too many, but in the end it worked out just perfectly. Our stop was an RV park co-located with a ‘horse hotel’, a camp for riders and their horses who come here to take advantage of all the great rides nearby. Our first day here dawned with a cattle drive. At about 5.30am a gradual increasing volume of mooing got loud enough to wake us and it sounded like there was a massive herd of cattle going right past the park and down the main road through town. We got up to investigate and that is exactly what was happening. The spectacle was entirely enhanced by the fact that actual cowboys on horses we doing the marshalling with their magnificently trained dogs and the sun was just rising over the mountain range. You couldn’t order up this stuff if you offered to pay for it.
Later, during normal Hampson waking hours, we cruised on foot along the short main street through Ten Sleep. This took mere moments. We padded out our adventure by chatting to the lady manning the visitors centre and then stopping for a milkshake at Dirty Sally’s, the general store. Here they served us up a pint of icecream each, barely liquefied enough to suck up a straw and thus be classified a drink. Our busy day continued with doing laundry and we got chatting to our ‘parked behind neighbours’ at the park. Mike and Sarah live full time in a big bus and she is a travelling nurse, currently working at the nearest town half an hour away. They had seen our ‘For Sale’ sign on Tin Can’s rear and expressed an interest, so we talked a bit about his and Big Dave’s attributes and the asking price. During our conversation we discovered that they love going up into the mountains in their Jeep Rubicon and they asked if we would like to go out with them the next day. We thought about it for about 0.4 of a millisecond and heartily accepted.
So the next day dawned, and 6 hours later we were up and about, breakfasted and loaded into a Jeep. We had an amazing trip of about 70 miles over 5 hours cruising up into the hills and navigating the narrow gravel roads that criss-crossed this side of the Big Horn Mountains. None of it was true off-roading, but it felt a like wilderness as we barely saw a single other vehicle or sign of human existance.
There were some free ranging cattle, some beautiful lakes, wildflowers, colourful rock formations and endless epic views. Sarah capped it all by whipping out a box of snacks as we stopped at a particularly amazing view point. To thank them for such an unexpectedly fantastic day we offered to buy them dinner in the form of pizza at the local….yes you guessed it…..brewery!
The Ten Sleep Brewery was about a mile and a half out of town and that evening it was hosting an open mic music night and a pizza van. Sounded like a good combination. We had planned to cycle but happily accepted another Jeep ride. The brewery was located in a magical location up a slight rise and nestled into the base of some craggy red rocks. It was still sunny and hot when we arrived but there was plenty of shade and as the sun dipped behind the rocks it cooled to that perfect warmth where the air feels entirely neutral on your skin. The beer was great (They make an infamous 6% IPA with honey undertones called Speedgoat. Infamous because it apparently gets you drinker than you thunk you are), the pizzas were excellent and the musicians mostly talented. Considering the tiny size of the town (about 270 population) there was quite a crowd. There was a combination of cowboy-hatted locals, RV dwellers and horse hotel types like us and a significant sized gaggle of rock climbers, all sporting their tattoo dawbed, sinewy limbs, female midriffs and manly neon painted nails. I tell you, it’s a thing.
In the morning we bade our farewells to Mike and Sarah, who like the rig but probably aren’t quite in a position to commit to it just yet, and we set off. This morning we were doing our first significant mountain climb, The Powder River Pass over the Big Horn Mountains. This was 5000 ft of climbing and descent over about 45 miles. It had stunning views and we took our time, plodding up to the pass summit at 9666ft. Here we stopped for our breakfast, a picnic of bacon and egg mayonaise buns. A nostalgic nod to our similar boating picnics with friends Lloyd & Laura in NZ. We were thinking of you guys!
The cruise down the hill was punctuated by many signs warning us of STEEP HILLS! 8% SLOPE! CHECK YOUR BRAKES! USE LOW GEAR! EMERGENCY ESCAPE LANE 1000FT! One of the escape lanes that uses a wire system to slow runaway lorries was out of action because it had been used in anger recently and needed repairing. Scarey stuff. We were fine and soon made it down the other side to Buffalo and joined the I-90, the big daddy of all the interstate highways. This road was going to see us all the way back to Washington.
The I-90 runs coast to coast from Seattle to Boston and is the longest interstate at 3021 miles. This seems a long way until I remind all you loyal readers that over the course of our first trip, during the spring/summer/autumn of 2017, we drove from Seattle to Boston, covering 8500 miles. We deviated from the direct route quite a lot, barely using the I-90. Now it was taking us up to our next stop, Sheridan. Our last Wyoming small town.
Where as most towns concentrate on 4th of July celebrations, Sheridan (pop approx 19,000) hangs fire for 10 days, saving its festivities for WYO Rodeo. This is a 5 day fiesta of country fun. There is the annual state rodeo and funfair, a street parade, a fun run, numerous charity events, a pow wow and dancing display by the local native tribe, Crow Nation, and several music events. We had timed our visit to join the fun.
I had pre-entered the fun-run, another 5km jaunt, but for some reason we hadn’t pre-purchased our rodeo tickets. Arriving on Thursday afternoon, our plan was to buy tickets on the gate for the Friday or Saturday rodeos depending on which had the better weather. The hot weather was spawning evening thunderstorms which would reduce the fun of cycling up to the showgrounds and spending the evening outside. Luckily we checked online to look at ticket availability and discovered that Fri & Sat had both sold out and there were very limited tickets available for Thurs. Limited to going that evening we hurriedly tried to buy tickets online but the system got confused and wouldn’t sell them to us. After half an hour we worked out that this was because our billing zip code was not in Wyoming. Now we were looking at having to buy them on the gate before they sold out and the box office opened at 5pm. It was now 4.30pm. We qickly showered and changed into our suitable rodeo attire of jeans, boots and shirts and then embarked on the 20 minutes cycle to the showgrounds. All this would have been easier if it wasn’t still 30 °C and the showgrounds weren’t up a hill. We arrived (fairly sweaty) soon after 5pm and managed to get our tickets just in the nick of time before they all sold out. Now there was only two hours to kill before the rodeo started. There was a funfair, but it was still really hot and sunny and we were hiding in the shade like vampires. We settled for people watching from the shadows under the grandstand with a cold beer or two.
There were several food trucks and a few market stalls selling cowboy hats and Wyoming branded gear. We opted for ‘meat and chips smothered with cheesy sauce’ from a BBQ van for our dinner and finally it was Rodeo Time! Our seats were not the best in the house, as could be expected as they were the last ones sold but at least they were under cover and out of the sun.
The program consisted of team Indian relay races, (one bareback rider, three laps of a track, three horses, crazy changeovers), bareback bucking broncos, (angry horses, ragdoll impersonating, crazy riders), saddled bucking broncos, (equally angry horses, mildly less crazy riders) calf roping, (bewildered baby cows, cowboys with crazy lasso skills), barrel racing, (nimble horses piloted by crazy girls whizzing round obstacles), bull riding, (just plain mega crazy) and the obligatory rodeo clown (entertaining the crowd by making normal people do crazy dancing).
It was very entertaining but we left after about 2 hours, probably only seeing about half of the events. We bailed early for three reasons: 1) our seats were incredibly unconfortable narrow aluminium bleachers with no backs, 2) it was getting dark and we didn’t have any proper lights for the bikes and 3) the sky was starting looking ominously like rain. Our freewheel down the hill was quite the ride and we arrived home just in time to escape a significant downpour.
The next day started with the second of my 5km ‘fun-runs’. This started at the far more civilised time of 8am and there were about 400 people joining me. Despite the altitude being about 1500ft less than my last run in Lander 10 days ago it was much harder. I think this was something to do with the significantly higher temperature (it was already 27°C at 8am) and there was a very cheeky hill in the middle. I staggered round at my tortoise pace, running the second half with a lady called Martha. It turned out she was the person that the rodeo clown had singled out from the crowd the evening before and she had done some epic and manic dancing all whilst being beamed onto the big screen. Respect to her for having no self-consciousness at all!
I managed to finish without expiring, although it was close, and whilst I was still very hot and and sweaty we went for breakfast at an establishment called ‘The Cowboy Cafe’. I was so hot that I even had an iced coffee, an Americanism that I usually have no trouble avoiding. Suitably recharged with eggs and now much cooler we adjourned to our next activity – the town parade. This was far more enthusiastic than the one we had seen in Lander and hiding from the sun in the shade of a tree seemed more appropriate for the occasion than sheltering from rain and getting borderline hypothermia.
We took loads of photos, but these four sum up the parade, and the location, for us.
The local native tribe, Crow Nation, had brought a huge contingent to town and they looked fantastic in all their traditional regalia. After the parade they put on a display of Indian dancing, a slow, rhythmic marching type movement in formation.The women were dressed in colourful long tunics covered with elk teeth. Apparently the numer of elk teeth on a tunic was representative of their family’s prowess as hunters and therefore their status.
All the male dancers had strings of bells attached from their waists to their feet creating a really atmospheric sound, coupled with the singing and drums. It was the best part of the day and by mid afternoon we were ready for home. On our last evening in town we had a rare mediocre meal out. This was mainly due to the service being quite bad, which in this land of tipping, is very unusual. Afterwards we eschewed the live music on the main street in favour of a small locals bar on the way home and the evening was salvaged by meeting Riley, the philosphical bar tender who had a love of retro British comedy and Dillon, the smiliest young man in the universe, who despite a ginger moustashe and mullet, was very cool looking and just a delight to talk to.
We decided that Sheridan was to be elevated in status to One Of The Best Very Cool Small Towns That We Have Visited, although I do appretiate that we were experiencing it on its showcase weekend. It felt like it had a great sense of community, plenty to do and, as I will say yet again, it was a delight to be able to easily cycle about. We were quite sad to be leaving both Sheridan and Wyoming in general. This state, or at least the parts that we visited this time, really captivated us. It was beautiful, wild and we loved the lack of traffic and crowds. The people were incredibly friendly and welcoming but also know they have something special here and hoped that their slice of paradise doesn’t get ‘discovered’ by the masses. So Shhhhhh….don’t spread the word… Wyoming isn’t real….
