Grandpa on the Trail - Part 2

       When we last heard from our aged correspondent, he had successfully negotiated his way down the long and dusty trail and through the ignominious squeeze chute. He had purchased staples for his journey (including the ever-present Coke Zero that fuels all things Grandpa) and moved on to the loading corral. He’s about to be loaded for shipment…

Photo courtesy of Emirates Airlines

    From the loading corral, we’re hustled (again amid the customary noises and smells of moving livestock in confined spaces) into the “bull-hauler”. Long, long ago the bull-hauler experience was much different. You dressed up for it. They fed and watered you well. They smiled at you. Now, not so much. Now they just run you down a long alley onto the bull-hauler with as many other critters as they can squeeze in there and shut the gate behind you. There used to be signs welcoming you. Now they should have signs like the ones that once graced the Coliseum – “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. I have dozens of quaint and charming experiences traveling by bull-hauler. Like the sultry summer day when we paused briefly on the tarmac in Newark for two hours to allow some thunderstorms to pass, and shut off the engines to conserve fuel that might have been wasted in keeping the air conditioning on. The Angus bull next to me was soon bathed in perspiration, which he generously shared with me. Or the wonderful in-flight

Photo courtesy of The Ranger

entertainment provided by the vaca loca en route from Atlanta not long ago. She had self medicated with a mix of drugs and alcohol at the loading corral to ease her anxiety (a habit I may well adopt myself) and proceeded to bawl and puke her way up and down the center aisle of the bull-hauler as we flew the friendly skies across the American heartland.
        But the charm of the bull-hauler is all too soon behind us as we once again are herded through the long alley and out to our new home on the range. Sometimes it’s a familiar pasture where we know all the best places to feed, water and rest while we chew our cuds. Sometimes it’s to new and dangerous pastures where I go with a briefcase to places I probably should go with a shotgun. Usually, there’s way too many critters already on what little grass is out there. I mill around for a couple of days and sometimes get rimrocked in the concrete canyons of Washington, DC or bogged down in the creek crossings of Providence, RI. But never quite soon enough, I'm back on the bull- hauler and headed for the home place.
      And I guarantee you my friends, despite all the joy of travel, Judy Garland said it best. There is indeed no place like home.

-Grandpa

Grandpa on the Trail - Part 1

      For a guy who set out to experience life never more than 150 miles from Green River, WY I seem to have managed to become a pretty seasoned traveler. It wasn't something I set out to do. It just sort of happened. Like an earthquake or a head-on collision with a logging truck, it was just one of life’s happy little surprises. So, given my status as an accomplished road warrior, I approached my colleagues here at Three Elk Meadow about becoming the designated travel correspondent.
        I pitched them the opportunity to bless you readers with the glamour of exotic places, the excitement of adventure, the thrill of discovery. Quite honestly, they seemed a little slow to catch the vision. So, in the tradition of great travel writers, I've decided to bravely forge on. I can only assume that Rudyard Kipling and Alexis de Toqueville encountered nay-sayers in their time, but did they simply quit and go home? They did not, and neither shall I, dear readers, neither shall I.       

      My work gives me the opportunity to travel a lot. It’s very glamorous. One of the best parts is what I fondly refer to as “shipping time”. For bovine or ovine passengers, it usually happens only a couple of times in a lifetime. For me, it happens once a month. Usually, it starts at some unearthly hour of the morning, when (like the ovids and bovids) I'm awakened out of a peaceful sleep out here on the range and herded onto the trail. Regardless of what you may recall from watching Rawhide when you were a kid, life on the trail is not a leisurely stroll from San Antonio to

Abilene. Usually, I join the herd moving from Cheyenne to Denver before the sun is up, but they're already on a hard lope. The speed limit on this trail is 75, but the only time we see that is when we’re speeding up or slowing down – and we do that a lot. Various scenic wonders along the trail (like a Subaru pulled off on the shoulder or one-dimensional skunk on the center line) cause the herd to balk, mill aimlessly and eventually come to a complete halt for a while. But eventually we get it sorted out and are happily back at 90, making our way to the next stop in our ordeal, uh.. I mean adventure.      

With only a minimum of bawling, mooing and bleating we make our way to the “squeeze chute”. This is a relatively new part of the whole shipping experience, designed to remind us that we are indeed livestock, and that we will be handled as such. After checking our brands to make sure none of us are mavericks, and touching us in places that would in any other circumstances land them in jail, the brand inspectors herd us into the “loading corral”. I've found this is a good time to feed and water if I can. The options are few and expensive, but it may be the last chance for a while so I'm usually happy to pay 20 dollars for a Coke Zero and a bag of Fritos. Experience has taught me that this may be the culinary high point of the next 12 hours.

-Grandpa

Happy Birthday, Wyoming!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Wyoming,
Happy Birthday to you!

Are ya one, are ya two, are ya three, are ya four…

     So a few weeks ago, this awesome state turned 125 years old. In my last post, I rambled on about being a Wyomingite, so this time I’d like to get a little bit into the history of the place. In my quest for knowledge over the past week, I’ve learned a ton about our state, and I’d like to share a little bit with you now:

Wyoming officially became a state on July 10, 1890 as the 44th state in the Union. But there’s so much more history to it before. In fact, there’s many thousands of years of history before that, but I’d make you spend the rest of your day sitting there and reading it, so I’d rather not. Wyoming was defined by three totally different things: equality, the railroad, and mining. Let’s get started!

      First, equality. We were the first state to give women the vote! This was even before we became a state, in 1869, while we were still the Wyoming Territory. William Bright sponsored a bill to allow women to vote. Wyoming thought, “why not?” and passed it into law. The suffragist Susan B. Anthony traveled here by way of the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad to “the land of Freedom” in 1871, which I bet was pretty cool. The 19th Amendment gave the rest of the nation’s women the vote much later, in 1919.

Next, the railroad: a biggie. The Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, was groundbreaking. It brought together the East and the West. New York to Sacramento, what used to be a grueling, perilous journey of six months by wagon, took now only a mere two weeks. Although, as Grandpa will talk about in his upcoming post, the grueling perilous journey of six months is still the same today with modern air travel. Many cities in Wyoming were founded because of it, including Green River, Rawlins, Laramie, and Cheyenne.

     Lastly, coal! We produce 40 percent of the nation’s supply of it. Long ago, although it seems weird, Wyoming was mostly underwater, and the bits that weren’t were tropical paradise. When all that stuff decomposed over millions of years, we gained tons of resources including coal and oil. Wyoming mining has transformed both us and the rest of the nation. You can’t swing a dead cat here and not hit some mine or other, usually coal. Grandpa spent some time down in the mines living in Green River way back when. Poor thing.

     So there we are. A few things that have transformed Wyoming from the wild west, vast and untamed, into the state it is today. I’m proud of all the work these people have put into it, and the great product it is today. And boy, is it great.

     There’s a lot to be proud of, too. Vast prairie without a sign of civilization for miles and miles. The Tetons, rocky spires shooting up from the ground against a fierce blue Wyoming sky. Yellowstone, the thundering of hundreds of hooves of buffalo like a thousand drums, geysers erupting on all sides. Tranquil streams, with brookies jumping and wildflowers on all fronts. Steamy forest ground, pine trees shooting up hundreds of feet in the air after a recent rainstorm high in the Wind Rivers. Miles of scorching red desert in south-central Wyoming. My favorite, a small, one-room log cabin, nestled in some trees in the Southwestern Wind River Range, a curl of smoke issuing from the chimney. Wyoming has it all, whether you’re a hunter, angler, hiker, explorer, or a combination of them all.

-The Ranger

Ham is Mighty Fine Bait

     Last week we went hiking up by The Cabin. It was a big adventure! We saw waterfalls, amazing wildflowers, bear sign and all kinds of wild things. We watched the sun make its way across the sky as we walked under the shadows of my mountains. We also found out something about ham.
      ApprenticeMom, Grandpa, Grandma, Smiles, Sparkles, and G-Man, and I got all ready for the hike the night before so we could just get up and go. But midway through the process of packing sandwiches, bug stuff, and breakfast burritos, I switched packs. I was in charge of the tackle…

      So we got up at the unearthly hour of 6:00 A.M (I am 13 so cut me some slack), and we left. We got to the trailhead and headed out on the 11-mile round-trip hike. After about mile half, the young kids got some low blood sugar, so we stopped and ate breakfast burritos. After that, it was a long hike but boy was it worth it.
       We got to the lake by lunchtime and immediately found a spot to plop the fishing lines in. Then I started going through my pack, and guess what I figured out: I had forgotten the lures in my other pack. So we decided that if we used the ham from the remains of our breakfast burritos, we might stand a chance. And it worked! We all caught some dang nice fish that tasted mighty fine.

So what can we learn from this experience?

1. When switching packs, remember to double check that you have everything.

2. G-Man and Sparkles are the toughest little monsters ever! They hiked their tails off and still had plenty of energy left at the end of the day.

3. Ham is mighty fine bait.

-The Apprentice