Laramie

With each passing mile as I head toward Laramie, the dim mountains grow clearer. I cannot help but think God built a wall around the West to keep mere mortals at bay.

 

The closer you get the less you see the mountains and the more you see the valleys.

At long last I arrived in Laramie after a climb from 3800 feet to 7200 feet in elevation.

Why am I excited about coming to Laramie, WYO? A year and a half ago I made an off-hand comment that the next thing we'd see in genre mashing would be an ‘erotic paranormal romance western mystery.’ I’d know more than said it when I knew the story. I got more excited about it as the year progressed and in November, in seventeen days, I wrote it. Then rewrote it before the end of the month.  By January it was published under the author name of my evil alter-ego, Devon Layne. It has become Devon’s most popular book in both eBook and print.

Great. The only thing is that I set the story in and around Laramie—a place I’d never visited. Now I’m wandering around looking to see if anything I said about the area is true. In general, so far the terrain is what I anticipated. Lots and lots of range land with the major crops being hay and cattle.

They have coffee! I bought five pounds of Coal Creek Coffee Company coffee before I got out of town! And a couple of "Turbos"--their name for a shot in the dark.

A lot of the story takes place around the University of Wyoming where Cole and Ashley are students. My first major story error was that there is no view of the cemetery from any window in the library at the University of Wyoming.

 

The Coe Library, however, is fantastic. And it is only steps away from the Student Union. That I got right, at least. The University campus is beautiful. Even the newer buildings have kept to the same sandstone construction as Old Main, the original building. UW was founded in 1886, four years before Wyoming became a State. And don't forget that the first legislature of the new Territory of Wyoming in 1869 passed a bill granting equal political rights to the women of the territory. Twenty-one years before it became a State!

The Greenhill Cemetery was much more visible from the fraternity houses. I somehow imagined Avenue of Flags to be a broad paved way lined with flags. All the paths thru the cemetery are dirt tracks. The Potters Field, however, is much like I imagined Caitlin's 1887 grave to be.

There was a big farmers market in downtown Laramie on Friday afternoon. I’m told it is there every Friday. The streets are closed and the booths line 2nd and Grand. I had a big Mexican lunch next door to the Buckhorn Bar and Parlor. All the brothels were finally closed in the 1960s. That was Caitlin and Kyle’s meeting point. The places on First all face the railroad that got the town started in 1868.

I was uncommonly lucky to delay my visit to Centennial until Saturday.

It was Centennial Community Day and there was a whole feast of activity at the history museum depot. There were community garage sales and ladies selling strawberry rhubarb pie. Yummy.

The countryside near Centennial is much as I imagined it though I probably chose the worst possible location for Cole's ranch in Albany County. It’s impractical to move cattle onto these steep slopes for summer grazing. Just to the east there are miles and miles of rangeland. I was told there are few ranches left though. The cattle are trucked in, graze, and are trucked out. Still, if I were Cole I wouldn't give up this land without a fight.

There’s an interesting thing about cattle that I didn’t realize when I started writing about ranching. Think of every picture you’ve seen of cattle or buffalo in movies or old western TV shows. They’re all bunched together. Well, that may be true when they are being driven or are frightened, but when grazing, a hundred head of cattle spread out over acres and acres of land. The same is true of buffalo. You can’t call them solitary by any means, but they sure aren’t fighting over the same tuft of grass.

 

With a population of only 582,650, Wyoming is the least populated state in the Union. It ranks 49th in population density at just 5.85 people per square mile. It is unfathomably beautiful. I would consider moving here, at least in the summers. Some of the big ranches are being subdivided and you can buy a 40-acre ‘spread’ just west of Laramie for only $85,000. Of course, then you have to put something on it to live in. The economy here seems to be good if house prices are any indication. Most of the real estate ads I've seen around Laramie are in the $500k range. In 2011, Money Magazine identified Laramie as one of the best cities in which to retire. It’s on my list!

Having actually visited here, I’m seriously considering writing a sequel to “Redtail” this fall. There are as many stories as people in this great state. In fact, I’ve already started research and character development for the story that I’ve tentatively called “Raven.” I might even get back to Laramie before I head south for the winter!

 

The Black Hills

I detoured north from Nebraska after spending a couple days at Chadron State Park just south of US Hwy 20. I went up to Custer, SD and stayed at Comanche Park. It's beautiful. I believe The Black Hills are high on my list of the ten most beautiful places on earth. If you've only driven by on I-90, you haven't really seen them. Of course, my first stop was at Mount Rushmore to see the faces carved in stone.

 

 Ah, yes. They are behind me.

This is a great monument in honor of Gutzon Borglum. There is very little here about the presidents depicted, their place in history, "Why Teddy Roosevelt???", or the American way of life. Everything is about the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. It is his mountain. His art. His glory. All told it was worth about the hour it took to see the entire exhibit and stare in wonder at the faces. He didn't even clean up his mess under them. The parking and concession is run by Xanterra. So your Senior pass is worthless here. $11 to park. On the other hand, the pass is good all year, so come back often!

I went on to Crazy Horse Memorial. Now that is something to look at. Korczak Ziolkowski, a talented artist and stone carver in his own right, was out of work once Rushmore was finished. It didn't take long to convince the Lakota that they had a hero as great as the four presidents and he could carve a mountain into the statue of Crazy Horse.

It's been in progress for sixty-five years now. The first blast was in 1948. Korczak died in '82. His wife Ruth passed away this spring. His children, grandchildren, etc. are still blasting away on the mountain and the tribes have created a very informative exhibit and museum, a college of arts, and plans for an entire cultural center.

Just two crazy guys hanging out on the mountain.

The next day, I did a huge Black Hills loop that still astounds me. I drove up to Devil's Tower twenty some miles from Sundance WY. It's hard to even describe this experience.

 The Devil has come home. The tower is still about five miles in the distance, rising about 900' from the base of the boulders.

 I look at this and think "You mean Borglum and Ziolkowski had nothing to do with carving this? How did it ever get here?" It took me about an hour and a quarter to walk around the base, during which time I saw many people, children scampering, and even climbers high on the mountain face. When I approached the loop, I naturally turned right. There were several hundred people at the monument, but it wasn't crowded. I walked around looking both up at its grandeur and out at the Black Hills. I was truly surprised the first time I saw someone coming toward me on the path. She turned off before we met, however, and I saw her headed for one of the climbing points. I met only three other people coming that direction. Everyone else chose to walk contretemps around the base. I got to wondering how many people would have to walk the other way to unwind it?

Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

I went through Sturgis, SD on the way back to camp. I was a couple days late for actually seeing thousands of riders, though I saw several hundred on the road over the past two weeks. All the vendors were closed and it looked like it would be a sleepy little town again until next year.

Custer State Park was incredibly beautiful. I want to return to the Black Hills and would like to camp in Custer State Park the next time. Coming out of it and into Custer, SD from the east on US Hwy 16A, I stopped to snap this photo. According to Grandfather Boyden's journal, he was born in Custer SD at the foot of Calamity Peak on Christmas Eve, 1895. This is Calamity Peak and may be about where that ancestor was born.

Today, I returned to Chadron State Park in Nebraska and tomorrow will be continuing westward into Wyoming. I plan to divert from US Hwy 20 to Laramie for a few days before continuing on to Yellowstone.

I love the Black Hills and plan to return here for a longer stay. The terrain is varied from prairie to mountain with all manner of landscape between. I saw deer, buffalo, turkeys, and prairie dogs.

"Soul-melting scenery was about me . . . this prairie where heaven sheds its purest light and lends its richest tints." George Caitlin

A year in the wild

Just twelve months ago today, my daughter and I jumped into the Ford F-150 and towed my new home across the Cascades to Daroga State Park for the first night of my great new adventure. Today, sitting in Nebraska's Chadron State Park, it is difficult to believe that I've been on the road for a year. What a trip!

And It's not over! I have touched the waters of the four coasts of the United States: The Pacific, The Gulf, The Atlantic, and The Lakes.

I have crossed The Columbia, The Colorado, The Rio Grande, The Mississippi, The Susquehanna, The Hudson, The Wabash, and The Platte. I have visited thirty-three states and have seen countless mountains, deserts, prairies, farmlands, and cities.

I have written 700,000 words, pubished four books, and talked to dozens of people who will one day become characters! I have stopped at every roadside rest area, every National Park, and hundreds of historical markers. If in my former life I would have driven by or flown over, I stop and look.

My journey, such as it is, has just begun.

Where have you been for the past two months????

Grrr. I don't like the question!

I have been traveling, roughly along US Hwy 20 for sixty days. I am currently in Valentine NE getting ready to go to the Cherry County Fair and Rodeo this evening. It has been a wonderful adventure so far in every way except being able to keep up my blog, for several reasons. First, the computer crash. Microsoft/Toshiba has cleverly disguised the blue screen of death with an error message and a frowny face. The net result is the same. I can't use the computer.

After trying for a week plus to recover it with only the computer's system backup, I eventually gave up and bought a nice reliable, low-end HP. I had a full backup of all my files, so getting them up on the new computer wasn't much of a problem. That's when my camera battery went dead and I couldn't find the charger. Not to worry. I have both a cell phone and a tablet computer. I started taking pictures on my tablet, accessing my websites, and getting things recorded, but didn't yet have access to blogger for updates. I still had to get my Microsoft products on my computer and without disks, my only alternative was to subscribe to Microsoft 360 online. So they're hitting me up for ten bucks a month to have Word and Excel and Outlook. But at least Expression Web is a free app now so I could start editing the web pages for the story I've produced.

Before I got around to tracking down my Adobe products so I could do photo editing and publishing, I started getting messages from Verizon that I was at the limit of my 20 gigabytes of data usage. First time I'd ever managed that. I gave it a rest until July when I figured I'd be able to download my apps. No such luck. By mid-month I was receiving warnings about my data usage. When I finally figured out the problem, I was paying an extra $15 a gigabyte to Verizon.

The problem? Microsoft's "service" to users of automatically backing up everything I did on the new computer and on my tablet to OneDrive so it was safe "in the cloud." That included uploading every single picture at full resolution taken on my tablet. Goodbye data usage allotment. I managed to get all my settings changed and hopefully am completely disconnected from the abomination of OneDrive!

Sadly, that wasn't the end of the problems. I finally got to my Adobe account to discover that their entire site is devoted to their own "cloud" applications. I just wanted to download my three little desktop apps, Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. I finally managed to get connected on a chat session with support and Tobassum was very helpful, getting applications that did not transfer when I updated my account information last January and sending me links to my download site and serial numbers. It took a while and I've probably used at least a quarter of my data usage for the month today just downloading the 5 gigabytes of InDesign, but I finally have those applications loaded and am editing photo images to suitable resolution for posting. I hope to begin posting things retroactively to the dates they occurred. For now, I'll try to keep up.