Our stay in Montpelier was also only for one night, so today we head to the big city: Pocatello, ID, home of Idaho State University… with Benny the Bengal…
Before we left the RV park in Montpelier we checked out some of their animals…
We headed down the road and found the town of Soda Springs, ID. It may look a little quiet, but this is Sunday afternoon, after all…
There is a “captive” geyser, and erupts every hour on the hour. But it is 1:30 and we didn’t want to wait…
We drove on. Idaho looks a lot like Wyoming…
We checked into the RV park and we are now all set. We are here for three nights, so we have some time to rest and rewind. I looked at Yelp to find a good restaurant here in the big city. My search for French restaurants returned only Italian restaurants. My search for American (new) returned only American (Traditional). Nope. We’ll not be dining out in Pocatello…
But, of course, there is always Happy Hours. Another couple joined us and we were happy way into the night…
We move on again, just like the wagons on the Oregon Trail…
We traveled across many miles of Wyoming landscape…
We are driving through “South Pass”. This is where most of the emigrants passed through the Rocky Mountains. The “pass” is about 35miles wide, and it crosses the Continental Divide at about 7,412 feet elevation, the lowest pass in this area of the Rockies…
So it’s all downhill from here…
The terrain changes continuously…
The terrain changes continuously…
The terrain changes continuously…
We crossed the Big Sandy River…
And we crossed the Little Sandy River…
And the terrain continues to change…
We stopped for lunch at Little America. There are hundreds of billboards on each direction of the freeway advertizing this place. Wall Drug, it isn’t. But it is a large gas station, a motel, and a restaurant…
We made a slight detour to the town of Granger to see the old stagecoach station and Pony Express station…
The stage station is in pretty good shape…
The Pony Express station not so much…
We continued on. The terrain is still changing…
We arrived at the RV Park.
Next to the RV Park is Fort Bridger State Historic Site
Again, I’m not a big fan of forts, but this did have some interesting things… The first schoolhouse in Wyoming!
The small building on the end is the first schoolhouse…
I particularly enjoyed the whitewashed hand cut limestone walls…
These stone buildings are original to the the mid 1800s…
The wooden buildings are not original… Wood is such a terrible building material…
We enjoyed seeing the bear trap…
This is the guardhouse, complete with an office and the jail cells…
The main building is now the museum…
Here is a detail of the limestone walls…
What I WAS interested was the roadside cabins… This is a restored example of typical roadside cabins that were all along the Lincoln Highway, offering motorists a place to spend the night…
The Lincoln Highway is one of the earliest transcontinental highway routes for automobiles across the United States of America. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway ran coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states.
The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles. Over the years, the road was improved and numerous realignments were made, and by 1924 the highway had been shortened to 3,142 miles.
The name of the Lincoln Highway was changed in 1926, as it became part of U.S. Route 30 from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. We on the Oregon Trail caravan have been following the route of US 30 for most of our trip…
Note that each cabin had a carport. Not only did this give you a parking space, but there were no common walls between rooms…
Note that this is not a “motel”. The first motel was the Motel Inn (originally known as the Milestone Mo-Tel), located in San Luis Obispo, California, was the first motel in the world. It opened on December 12, 1925, and closed in 1991. The building is now the administrative building of the Apple Farm Inn hotel next door. I lived just down the street from the Motel Inn whilst I was a college student in San Luis Obispo…
We had a big variety of tours and sights today. We started at the Eagle Bronze Foundry and Gallery…
We were given an extensive tour of the foundry, with all the steps and processes explained, from the artist’s concept in a small model, which is scanned into a special 6d computer model, to full size mockups, to sectioning the mockups to 30″ x 30″ sections, adding clay and wax, and casting the bronze at 2100 degrees… It is an amazingly complex process…
Examples of foam and latex molds…
The sand castings, with the wax melted out, ready to cast the bronze…
Completed castings being reassembling into the finished monument…
Coloring, adding patina, and finishing…
It was fascinating tour! It is an amazingly complex process…!
And then we moved on. We went to Sinks Canyon State Park. This is the site of the “vanishing river”…
The river flows through these rocks, into a shallow cave, and the water disappears… This is called “The Sink”…
We found that the water falls through cracks and fissures underground, until about two hours later it reappears in a pond about a quarter mile away…
As we walked we marveled at these shear rock canyon walls…
We found the pond (The Rise). It was peaceful and serene…
One other thing that flows underground and comes up in this pond are Rainbow Trout!
These trout are 16-24 inches long!
Since no fishing was allowed we drove back to downtown Lander. It is a typical small downtown, struggling to stay viable…
We had lunch at Middle Fork, a nice little restaurant downtown. It was barely not too hot to sit outside…
After lunch we drove a few miles north to the Sacajawea Cemetery…
Sacagawea (/ˌsækədʒəˈwiːə/ or /səˌkɑːɡəˈweɪə/; also spelled Sakakawea or Sacajawea; May c. 1788 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, at age 16, helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations and contributing to the expedition’s knowledge of natural history in different regions.
Note that there is uncertainty as to when she died. She was either 24 or 95. Accordingly, there are two burial sites to be found… This one in Wyoming, and another in South Dakota. You pick…
We drove back to the VIlla. Lots of nice countryside here…
This evening we joined many other Airstreamers for Happy Hours while we watched the sunset…
We move along today to see some unique sites along the Oregon Trail…
But first we pass some rural, tranquil neighborhoods…
We saw some red bluffs; most emigrant diarists mentioned them along the way…
We stopped at a pull-out to look at the Pathfinder Reservoir. We also found this lovely estate development. Homesites 7-20 acres, from $11,000 per acre. Bargain!
Here is the non-gated entry…
Here is the Pathfinder Reservoir
Here is the Villa…
As we were leaving the pull-out three other Airstreams came by. About a mile down the road we had a construction zone, with very slow traffic, allowing us to get some good pictures…
Our main stop for the day is Independence Rock. A big ol’ rock in the middle of the prairie… Of course we stopped to take a look…
The significance of the rock has many facets. First of all, walking 20 miles per day across the endless prairie was very monotonous. Anything unusual caught the emigrants’ attention. This big rock certainly is unusual. Also, the emigrants’ goal was always to reach Independence Rock by Independence Day – July 4. It was important for the emigrants to celebrate the 4th, and this area gave the emigrants space, water, and game to rest for a day or two. Importantly, Independence Rock is just about one half way between Independence, MO, where most of the emigrants set off to Oregon City, OR. Finally, many of the emigrants painted, scratched, or chiseled their names into the rock. Historians have been all over the rock to collect the various signatures and to correlate them with known emigrants and their diaries…
We walked around and onto the rock looking for names. No one we know… Most of the painted or scratched names have been worn away by the weather…
There is a grave here, fenced off…
“Look! Over there!”
We walked ALL AROUND the rock…
On the opposite side of the rock are various placques placed by various historic societies and donors. There have been several Boy Scouts of America “Camporees” here over the years, so BSA also has many placques…
After enjoying the rock we walked back to the entrance. We stopped to watch these birds in a mud nest under the eaves of the visitors center…
We returned to the Villa and drove about four miles down the road to Martin’s Cove. This is an historic site ownered and leased by the Mormon Church. The site commemorates the caravans of Mormons heading to the Great Salt Lake Valley. They could not afford covered wagons so they used hand carts to carry their worldly possessions. They endured many hardships, and up to as many as 25% of them died along the trails.
One feature of the site is the Devil’s Gate – a gap in the rock that allowed the wagons and handcarts through these mountains…
There is also a reproduction of an early fort that the Mormons used to protect themselves from the extreme cold. Portions of the fort were burned to keep the people warm…
And so we traveled on. Another landmark helping the emigrants find their way is the Split Rock. The trail turned here as it approaches the Rocky Mountains to the west. Split Rock pointed the travelers to the South Pass, the easiest way through the Rockies…
About 15 miles further we stopped to see… the back side of Split Rock…
And we are on the road. We caught up to a convoy of seven other Airstreams for our last leg into the town of Lander, WY…
More red rock bluffs…
And we are all in, connected, and paid for…
We had a little Happy Hours and enjoyed a light supper. An enjoyable time was had by all…
Short stories today. I woke up Monday with a sore throat; Lynda has had a cold since Saturday. We stayed in all day…
We did manage to get outside and walk a bit around the RV park, but it is constantly hot and dusty and windy…
We were feeling well enough to get out about 4:00 and join the club at a very good steak house nearby. After a few Old Fashioneds at the bar, and an appetizer of steak tartare, we joined the others for prime rib and cheesecake…
We returned to the Villa and turned in early…
Tuesday we felt a bit better (or at least Lynda did…) We headed out at 10:00 am to see the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper…
It is located on a bluff adjacent to the Overland Trails – the trails used by the emigrants to Oregon, the 49ers going to California, and the Mormons going to the Great Salt Lake valley…
Before we had left the campground this morning our leaders asked that the ladies wear their Oregon Trail bonnets and dresses… As you might guess, we are non-participants in activities such as this…
We walked toward the museum building…
The building itself reflects a lot of imagery…
The blue wall segments represent the continuous westward trek by the pioneers and the emigrants, always up hill. Missouri is at about 2,000′ elevation, and the continental Divide is at roughly 7,000′ where the trails crossed it…
The stone wall is all native sandstone, and the green wall represents the sagebrush that was the emigrants constant companion on the prairie.
The arch portal, of course, represents the hoops and canvas of the covered wagons…
Inside we watch a short film about the emigrants. The lifesize displays added to the realism of the film…
Some of the Mormon emigrants could not afford oxen or mules, so they carried their possessions for 1,500 miles using handcarts. Lynda gave it a try!
One of the more interesting tidbits of the radical changes the emigrants brought to this region is in addition to all the other self-inflicted damage that I have reported on – loss of food and habitat for Indians, Pony Express ended by the transcontinental telegraph, wagon trains ended by the railroad, small towns ended by the Interstate Highways…
As the 350,000 emigrants passed through here on the trails small settlements sprang up to service the needs of the emigrants. When the trains ended the wagon travel, the rails took a different route again, this time to be more convenient to the coal deposits of southern Wyoming. These settlements slowly vanished…
Outside the Museum is a reproduction of a typical Pony Express station. There is a small stable and a small office for the station master. The station master lived here alone; and he was alone – he was visited by only four Pony Express riders per week. Otherwise he was free to fend for himself. When the Pony Express ended, most of these stations were retrofitted to be relay stations for the telegraph… Adaptive Reuse!
We returned to the Villa. I took a nap… Then we had a modest Happy Hours. We walked around the RV park in the evening…
We are leaving Nebraska today, traveling to Casper, WY (actually Evansville…).
But before I talk about today, here is a picture of all of us at Scott’s Bluff yesterday…
We drove through the Robidoux Pass, between the major cliffs at Scott’s Bluff. We will be following the the Oregon Trail for much of our trip today…
Beyond we see Nebraska countryside once again…
As we move west, closer to Wyoming, the terrain changes…
We entered Wyoming and found the town of Fort Laramie. Surprise! There is a fort here! As we headed for the fort we crossed over the North Platte River (for about the 8th time today…). Adjacent to the modern bridge we crossed is the old iron bridge built by the Army in the mid-1800s…
As we approached the fort we encountered three of our friends as they were leaving…
The visitors center had several well developed displays telling the history of the fort. It was originally a trading post, until the US Army bought it in 1849. By 1849, as California-bound 49ers joined the Oregon Trail emigrants the trickle of wagons across the plains had become a flood. The fort provided protection in addition to becoming a major supply post, the first since Fort Kearney, 600 miles to the east…
As the emigrants passed through the area they brought destruction… Annually, 10,000 wagons, 50,000 people, and 75,000 head of animals passed through here. The people and cattle killed and/or chased away the game, depriving the Indians of their food supply. Livestock trampled the grass across a two mile wide swath of land. The wagon wheels scarred the land; these scars are still visible over 150 years later. (As we will see at our next stop…)
Peace with the Indians was spotty at best. Treaties were made, treaties were broken. The Platte River Ferry incident and the Grattan Fight brought peace to an end. For 25 years the Northern Plains Indian Wars raged. By 1860, as the emigrant traffic slowed (with the introduction of stagecoach travel, and then train travel) the fort transformed from a rest stop for emigrants into a base of military operations against the Northern Plains tribes…
Through the 1860s the fort stood as a vital link between the east and west. 500,000 people now lived west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 the Pony Express came through, followed by the transcontinental telegraph. When the Civil War began, troops were withdrawn from the fort. The small crews left behind had to scramble with maintaining the hundreds of miles of telegraph lines. As the Indian wars rages, Indians attacked the fort, telegraph lines, stagecoach travel, and the wagon trains. The Fort Laramie Treaties of 1868 held the promise of peace on the plains. It was short lived…
The beginning of the end was Col. Custer and his defeat by Sitting Bull at Little Bighorn in 1876. This so enraged the army (and the federal government) that they set out on a mission of retaliation. This culminated at Wounded Knee in 1890, with the slaughter of between 150-300 Lakota Indians by the US Army. It ended any organized resistance by the Indians to living on reservations.
Fort Laramie in the 1880s was a “golden era”, as a false sense of of permanence prevailed. New buildings were built, old buildings were improved, and an active scene prevailed among the officers and the local citizens. In the mid 1880 a railroad nearby brought all the amenities of Victorian life to the fort.
In 1886 a new, larger railhead was built at the adjacent Fort Robinson. It made Fort Laramie superfluous. In 1889, the fort was closed and abandoned. In 1890, the land and buildings were sold at a public auction. Also in 1890, Wyoming was declared a state and the Indians were all on reservations. In 1890, the Superintendent of the Census declared that the American frontier had ceased to exist.
In 1937 a group of local residents of the town of Fort Laramie finally prevailed on the state of Wyoming to purchase 214 acres of old fort property, and preservation and restoration of the fort was begun.
I’m not a fan of forts and old buildings like this. We saw the fort, we learned the history, and we traveled on… It was a god thing that we were leaving now… In a few minutes the parking lot looked like this:
So we hurried on… About ten miles down the road we came to the town of Guernsey, with its giant rail yard. All these train cars are filled with coal, heading into Nebraska to fuel the 15 giant power plants there…
We crossed the North Platte River, again…
We found the ruts we are looking for…
These runts, worn into the sandstone, are impressive…
As we returned from the ruts and trails we found the Villa in the distance…
We drove the short distance back to the town of Guernsey. We stopped at the Twisted Eatery for lunch…
Nothing fancy here. No avant garde food. Just well made, simple food. We enjoyed our sandwiches! And we traveled on…
We arrived at our campsite in Evansville, adjacent to Casper… Lots of gravel, and a small patch of plastic grass at each site…
Happy hours were enjoyed. It is hot and windy this afternoon and evening. We enjoyed our view of the North Platt River…
We slept fitfully all night because there was a very strong windstorm blowing outside… but the morning dawned nicely.
We rode along with another Airstream couple from Jerusalem… We headed towards Scott’s Bluff National Monument…
In the 1930s the Park Service, with the help of the CCC, constructed this road to the top of the bluff, including three tunnels…
The views from 800′ above the valley floor must be spectacular. Unfortunately, we have smoke-filled skies from the Canadian fires.
A close-up look at the bluff shows the layers: on top, the limestone cap, then alternating layers of sandstone, volcanic ash, and clay… The entire area around here used to be plains at the same elevation of Scott’s Bluff. However, most of it lacked the limestone cap, so over a few million years it has all eroded away to todays configuration…
We walked along the paths trying to see different views. Still smoke all around…
Back down at the Visitors Center we looked at the exhibits. We looked at the bluffs from below…
Then we walked along the real, authentic Oregon Trail…
Next stop was the famous landmark: Chimney Rock…
There was a very nice visitor center…
One of the exhibits showed the Oregon Trail through Nebraska. Note Chimney Rock to the left… (We leave Nebraska tomorrow…)
Behind the Visitors Center is the official view of Chimney Rock:
Chimney Rock is similar composition as Scott’s Bluff, with the exception that there is no limestone cap. Therefore, Chimney Rock is eroding much faster than Scott’s Bluff, and it will soon melt into the surrounding plains…
We returned to the Villa, had a leisurely afternoon… tomorrow we head for Wyoming!
We wanted to beat the traffic entering Yellowstone, so we pulled out at 6:45 am. We headed from the RV Park in Montana, into Wyoming, and through the Roosevelt Arch…
The early morning drive through Yellowstone was beautiful, but, other than the elk that was standing in the Roosevelt Arch, which delayed our drive for a few minutes, we saw no wildlife…
That isn’t to say that there was no excitement today… Back in Burbank our two older grandchildren boarded the big yellow school bus for the first time… They are heading to Beach Camp! We expect them to return tired, sandy, and sunburned (just a little…).
So we continued through the park. Believe it or not, this is the fastest route from Gardiner, MT to California…
We came upon some geothermal activity. This was bigger than any similar sulfur-smelling steam venting we had seen in all our time here…
But we continued on, traveling south, then heading west, exiting the park at the west entrance…
It took about one hour to travel the park. As we left we saw the lines of cars trying to get into the park. This line of traffic is still 3-4 miles from the park entrance…
So we passed on out of Wyoming, back into Montana, and on through to Idaho.
Somewhere in Idaho we stopped to stretch our legs and eat a snack. We pulled off an anonymous offramp and parked between the Potato Growers of Idaho Association and a FedEx Distribution center…
Back on the freeway we continued south…
We ate lunch at a nice rest stop somewhere in southern Idaho…
We passed over into Utah, and on the Tremonton, where we found a very nice RV Resort…
Aspen Grove RV Resort, Tremonton, Utah. Large sites, concrete pads, full hook-ups. Come back in 5 years – they have planted a tree at each site – in five years we won’t be able to use our satellite TV…
There was another Airstream in the park – pulled by a Porsche Cayenne… We had an interesting chat about tow-vehicles, hithes, and Airstreams in general…
Another interesting feature of the RV Park is that several sites have Electric Vehicle charging stations…!
For our 47th wedding anniversary dinner we selected the finest restaurant in Tremonton… It is a diner at the bowling alley…
We tried to have a toast, but this being Utah, there was no wine…
After a fairly unremarkable dinner we returned to the Villa…
Today is the last full day of the Caravan. We head for home tomorrow…
We had a quiet morning, with a rare breakfast of bacon and eggs… We headed for the Final Banquet (lunch) at 10:30 – if you show up on time you are late!
We walked about the town of Gardiner. By the way, the town is named after a 19th century fur-trapper named Johnson Gardner. Oh! The Ironing!
We walked over to the original entrance to Yellowstone, the Roosevelt Arch…
We also found out we were in the Gallatin Custer National Forest… Lots of Federally owned land around here…
From the town we could see the Airstreams parked in the adjacent RV Park. (Due to a variety of mix-ups, the Villa is parked at another RV Park seven miles out of town…
We like watching rivers. Here the Yellowstone River flows right through the town… and it continues down past our RV Park…
The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 692 miles long. It drains an area stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park, across the mountains and high plains of southern Montana and northern Wyoming. It eventually joins the Missouri and then the Mississippi Rivers.
We also saw a lot of the Snake River, in Yellowstone as well as in Grand Tetons NP. At 1,078 miles long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake River rises in western Wyoming, then flows through the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the Oregon–Idaho border and the rolling Palouse Hills of Washington, emptying into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities, Washington.
So the Yellowstone River is on the east side of the Continental Divide, and the Snake River is on the west side… And they are both here in Yellowstone…!
We returned to the Cowboy, on their upper open-air deck. Caravans don’t usually repeat locations like this, but the restaurant that was planned for the final Banquet burned down last winter…
We all gathered for a social time together…
Lunch was served. This time it was baked Montana trout. (I would have preferred the fried chicken that we had last time…)
After lunch we had presentations, accolades, and door prizes…
Adventures in the Villa 