Arrival, with a side order of Nowhere, WY
My apologies to the residents of Cheyenne for my previous post. I unknowingly questioned why anyone would live in Cheyenne. I now understand why.
Beyond Cheyenne is Rawlins, after which is a surreal scape leading to Landler. High Plains Drifter meets Total Recall. You reach the crest of a hill, and look down into a valley 10 miles wide and 30 miles long seeing only road and scrub brush. I drove towards one large hill for an hour, and after that time it still appeared in the distance.
Lewis and Clarke crossed this path, as did countless thousands of settlers later in the century, with no sign of water or direction. I drove across this space in several hours – each hour which would have taken a week for them – and I wanted to turn around. It is a testament to their fortitude and ability that they continued.
Landler is the type of town one can escape within. Nice. Forgettable. The prominence of Landler is it’s proximity to the Indian reservation of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapahoe tribes. For history buffs, Sacajawea was a member of the “Snake People,” or the Shoshone. The Shoshone were not known to be a violent tribe, but their ability to survive in such rugged surroundings makes me rethink my perception of them and that we could learn much from their history. The “non-violent” tribes of North America must have been very tough, but rather than resorting to violence as other tribes, which would have allowed them to claim other grounds, they chose to exist within the land.
Leaving Lander, I continued to Dubois. I think Red Dawn was modeled after this town. Great Western town, on the edge of the mountains. Friendly townspeople trying to build a strong community, with clean streets and American pride on display. Dubois seems a stopping point on the way to Yellowstone, as it offers all sorts of old roadside motels with names like “Branding Iron Inn,” “Trail’s End Motel,” and “Rocky Mountain Lodge.”
At this point, the sky had turned to dark. Dark in the mountains is absolute. No shadows. Light from the headlights are absorbed by trees with no reflection. It’s a lonely feeling driving through winding roads in the dense forests of tall pines.
I made Grand Teton National Park, which I entered twice (see map). Little did I know that Autumn is the time of year which the National Park Service chooses to perform road work. As I’m driving down a curvy mountain road, flanked by dense trees, the pavement goes away.
The one benefit of driving on a mountain dirt road is you don’t know whether you should be scared or not. You may be next to a thousand foot cliff, but you can’t see it. Ignorance is only bad when the wrong thing happens.
I left Grand Teton, then re-entered. From Moran, it was thirty miles of pitch black to Jackson. My hotel was easy to find on the North side of Jackson, even with nothing else being visible.
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