Casper, WY

"You should really go to...."

Everybody has suggestions for places we absolutely must see, and we welcome these suggestions and love hearing stories about places people fell in love with. There were certainly spots that M & I dreamed of taking the kids. This trip has been years in the making and it hardly seemed real as the pieces fell into place one by one....remote job...check. Funds for camper....check. Upgraded tow vehicle...check. Homeschool paperwork for kids...check. Some attempts at planning a route were thwarted by a work trip required for M and a Girl Scout camping trip for Laurel and me. We left Pittsburgh several weeks later than we would have liked. I guess at a certain point we realized that we didn't really care where we went. When we hitched up the camper at the storage lot where we store it, we were not entirely sure that we had packed everything we needed nor did we have a specific destination in mine, other than "west of here." We drove through Ohio and almost all the way through Indiana the first day and stopped because it was raining.

Exhibits highlighting
Lakota (Dakota Nakota)
 history are also prevalent here.

A few weeks before we left, we did a brainstorming activity to try and narrow down everyone's expectations and pick a starting direction at least. Some surprising things came up as we tallied the votes...South Dakota being one of them. This area is characterized by people who like to roam around. Sometimes the roaming was to follow food sources or to avoid particularly unpleasant seasonal weather conditions. For others, it was a certainty that some kind of paradise lay just ahead. We stopped at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, WY and I was struck by the sheer numbers of people who walked through here during a 20 year period, almost half a million, who mostly walked the 2,000 miles, next to their wagons or handcarts full of all their worldly possessions. I have walked 2,000 miles and while it's difficult at times, it's mostly just very tedious. And I didn't have to deal with dysentery or watching my oxen drown in the Sweetwater River.

So, why Casper, WY? It's on the way to Salt Lake City. We were cold and wet. Salt Lake City is warm and dry. In other words, not really any good reason. To me, Casper felt like a town where a bar fight may break out at any moment.  Lots of money, not enough women. We somewhat accidentally stopped at a steakhouse for dinner, and then slept in a Walmart parking lot. Not legal, but politely sanctioned. M had to work in the morning, so I took the kids to the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center. Then we drove up onto the high plain towards the pass. The wind was gusting to 50 mph and it was hard work to keep the trailer in the lane. There was not much to see, but we did pass a bison ranch. Unlike the bison we saw at Badlands and Custer State Park, these ranched bison were running and charging at each other. It was amazing to watch. We stopped at Independence Rock so I could unclench my fingers for a moment. The wind died down after we descended a few thousand feet and it was an easy drive into Salt Lake City. Glittery city lights below, with a clear starry sky above and a cartoonish crescent moon setting over the western mountains. Pretty magical. But mostly we were happy to be out of the rain.

I cannot exactly recommend that you go to Casper, WY. It's very far away from everywhere. But should you be passing through, go sit in the tipi and look out at the Platte River and think about the oil drilling and the bison ranches and the wind turbines and the flood of emigrants and the Indigenous people who watched a way of life collapse around them not so long ago.