Home at Last!

The Sinks

Monday, June 20, 2011 – This morning we found another library, this one in Riverton, WY, to check email, find a local BLM office near where we wanted to camp, and publish the latest post.  Throughout the US and Canada on this trip, we have always found local libraries to be WiFi capable and helpful, even always allowing us to plug in electrically, as our computer battery was invariably low.  Then, we drove on to Lander where we had been in the early 1990’s when Susan was riding competitive trail.  We remembered “The Sinks”, where the middle fork of the Popo Agie River goes underground for a quarter of a mile, then resurfaces.  The memory wasn’t clear, so we returned today to take a look.  The water takes 1.5 hours to go that short distance, and more water emerges than went in, so there are still mysteries about this area, now part of a state park.

We set up camp at Cottonwood Campground in the Green Mountain area, near Jeffrey City, then went looking for jade in the countryside.  We met another rockhounding couple way out there, and he showed us some beautiful pieces that he had found and polished. We did get some lesser quality pieces, but it was still fun.  On the way back to the campsite, a rainbow arced across the afternoon sky.  We shared the prairie with many pronghorn antelope and a few cows; one black-and-white caught our attention.



Independence Rock



Tuesday, June 21, 2011 – Happy summer!  We are heading East toward Caspar, WY on US Highway 287.  This road, in part, follows the old Oregon Trail, and there are historic sites along the way.  The most interesting, to us, was Independence Rock, where wagon trains would stop and celebrate July 4, starting in 1830.  They wanted to be at that place by July 4, so they would beat the fall and winter snows further west.  (More than 550,000 people passed through this area on the Oregon Trail.)  On this rock, people chiseled their names and recorded births, deaths, etc., some still visible.  Also, there was a plaque commemorating a re-creation trip made by a man named Ezra Meeker, one of the early settlers from 1852 who hitched up a team of oxen and followed the trail again in 1906.



Between Muddy and Caspar Mountains



In Caspar, the BLM staff routed us a long way around, via Circle Drive, to get to our chosen campground, Lodgepole c.g. on Muddy Mountain.  On top of that the road in for 7.5 miles was miserable, whereas we found out that the other way in was much shorter and paved although steeper.  The campground was very nice, however, and no one else was camping within miles of us, so it turned out well.  We went looking for rocks near an archery range on nearby Caspar Mountain and found a few pieces of bluish white agate and did not get pierced by any arrows. 

Rockhounding in Wyoming

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 – Because we were heading south (toward Medicine Bow, WY via highway 487), the shortest route was to retrace our way back out the bumpy, muddy Circle Drive.  We did find some agate and alabaster (a fairly soft, white, carveable material) along this road, and once on hwy 487 we dropped the trailer and took some trips off onto dirt roads and found lots of petrified wood and moss agate.  Moss agate is translucent but has impurities inside which make interesting patterns.  We continued south, turning west for a short time to cross I-80 near Wolcott and then south to Saratoga.  There, the North Platte River was running full,  requiring the placement of sandbags through the town. 



Swollen Encampment River

 We camped along the also full, although smaller, Encampment River in our final BLM campground in Wyoming, every one a gem.



Repairs at Colorado Border

 Thursday, June 23, 2011 – Excited about getting home today, we were up and out early.  We entered Colorado and drove through North Park to and through Walden, then hit US Highway 40 just east of Rabbit Ears Pass.  All of a sudden, we were back in heavy, truck-infested traffic and construction delays.  Our trip was rapidly coming to a close.  We turned south at Kremmling to Silverthorne, then I-70 to Copper Mountain, Fremont Pass to Leadville, and (at last) highway 24 to Buena Vista and home, arriving about 3:00 pm.

While most of our trip had been through green country lush from snow runoff and plentiful rain, our Chaffee County was dry and very brown, but looked great to us.  We set up the camper one more time to unload clothes and food, watered some trees, took much-needed showers, ate, visited neighbors to pick up mail and catch up on local news, then turned in and slept like the dead.

Overall, we traveled 12,078 miles according to out trip odometer, luckily without major mishap.  Moose performed as well as could be expected, averaging 17.1 mpg while pulling a 3,000+ lb trailer.  Total mileage on the vehicle is over 145,000 but he is still going strong, hopefully for a long time.  The TrailManor camper also was as good a companion as we had hoped – easy to tow and comfortable to live in.  We have not decided yet whether to keep it because the complexity of the lift mechanisms resulted in lots of brackets, catches, nuts and bolts, which tended to shake loose while traveling over the washboard dirt roads that we frequent in our Colorado camping trips.  We are taking it into a dealer in a couple of weeks to get it into shape and will make a decision then.  It was also too long to fit into some campsites as well as grocery parking lots, and we may look at the same trailer only shorter.  All in all, the camper was perfect for this trip.

We liked the more desolate, wild areas that we visited, in part because they are getting more rare and in part because those worlds are what the car commercials display – empty roads, big views, and freedom.  While we are not ready to just start another adventure right now, we would not have traded this experience for anything.