Wyoming

June 1st, 2023

I left Colorado on May 24th. I never had my cardiologist appointment, as he was called away for a hospital emergency. He knew I was heading for Wyoming for a month and did not call to stop me. So, I assume I will live for a while longer. My appointment was thus postponed until July 6th.

I drove north up Highway 287 from Fort Collins to Laramie. The area was very scenic as I passed through rolling hills of giant boulders in piles. It was overcast with occasional fog, bringing out saturated colors of green and brown. At Laramie, I jumped onto Interstate 80 heading west towards Rawlins. I hoped to find some dispersed camping just south of Rawlins. I would stay long enough to make it through the potentially crowded 3 day holiday.

The target camping area, by Teton Reservoir was closed, but I found a site just to the north on Rim Lake. It wasn’t the nicest place to camp. Rim Lake was all but dried up. A high rim to the west was still festooned with snow drifts. The terrain was covered in sage, low scrub, and grass. An occasional vehicle came down the dead end road and immediately left. No other campers were around. Other than a random breeze through the sage, my stay was deathly quiet. I did see some Pronghorn nearby and signs of mule deer. Other than that, there were ground squirrels and a few birds.

I left a day early, and drove to Rock Springs where I stayed in a Walmart parking lot for one night before travelling to my next reserved USFS campsite on Fremont Lake, near Pinedale. It was Memorial day and most of the holiday campers were leaving the area. The campground was all but empty by the time I checked in.

I walked through the small park along Pine Creek and down and back on the main street through Pinedale while I waited for the 2 p.m. afternoon check-in time. I was just in time for the small Memorial Day parade through town, made up of a handful of riders dressed up as Army Cavalry.

It has been 44 years since I visited Pinedale. Back then, I passed through as I headed up into the Wind River Mountains for my first backpack trip. It is an easy trip to remember, as it was 1979 and we were going through an oil crisis. There were gas shortages at many service stations and sometimes very long lines at the pumps. We drove our 1977 Buick Special across the plains, stopping often when we saw an open station, trying to keep the tank full.

We spent a week in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, before heading to Pinedale for the hike. There we made 3 mistakes. The first was not getting acclimated to the 10,000 foot elevation ahead of time. After 3 days, the lack of Oxygen wore me down, and we cut the hike short. In the evenings, I was so out of breath, that just sitting up in the tent to take my socks off, left me totally winded. We headed back to the trailhead.

The second mistake was revealed upon arrival back at the car. We were looking forward to a snack from the bag of Cheetos we had left in the glove compartment. However, there were only crumbs left. Chipmunks had found their way through the engine compartment, firewall, and into the back side of the glove box.

Potentially far worse was mistake three. In the excitement to get to the trailhead, I forgot to fill the gas tank before driving up to the trailhead. We had fumes to get us back to Pinedale, and then pray that there was an open gas station in the small town. Fortunately the road back down out of the mountains was nearly downhill for all fifteen miles, and there was a corner Arco station open right at the junction with Highway 191. I do recall that they would only allow you to pump ten gallons of gas or 9 dollars. That was alright, as it would get us back to the larger town of Jackson. The only really bad things was, they had no Cheetos either.