Day Ten, in words

Apologies for the interlude…we’ll see how far I can get this morning before I get kicked out of the hotel. ;-) This is the first Internet access I’ve had since leaving Estes Park…

On Day Ten, I went out and discovered:

• Hugs and waves goodbye from my parents upon leaving Estes Park.
• Glen Haven, a town of about twenty people along the way out of Estes Park…and the Glen Haven General Store (also the Glen Haven Only Store), which serves, among other things, some fantastic cinnamon rolls. Anybody who understands my passionate love affair with good cinnamon rolls will know what this meant to me.
• The dramatic difference between mountain cities and plains cities in Colorado. Estes Park is all rugged mountain terrain, rivers pounding over boulders, and cool coniferous forest. Fort Collins (where I stopped briefly) is blazingly hot plains, boom cars driven by skinny white guys with baseball caps on backwards and huge gold chains, and chain stores. Wow. Um, I know where I’d rather stay…
• Wyoming! Wyoming pretty much fits every image you have in your head of what it should be like: incredibly rugged, incredibly friendly individualists that might think you’re all crazy there in Berkeley (and perhaps we are) but who are the nicest people in the world. The land stretches on forever, and you really understand a little bit of what this kind of life must be like. It’s absolutely beautiful and I fell in love with it…
• Oh, by the way: there are “Open Range” signs all over Utah and Wyoming. They are no joke; I’ve driven within a few feet of cattle grazing at the side of the road — and on the road — quite a few times. Last year, driving a little bit over the speed limit (OK, 75) on a two-lane road at night, I forgot about the signs and very nearly hit a herd of cows that were lying in the middle of the road as I came around a curve. If I hadn’t had anti-lock brakes and swerved hard, I really would’ve hit a cow — and I suspect that in a fight between a cow and my little car, the cow would win. Still, seeing all the cows and calves wandering together is really pretty charming, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything…
• Laramie. I wanted to go there largely because of The Laramie Project, a really terrific film made about Matthew Shepard several years ago. Not to condemn Laramie (far, far from it!) but just to understand what it’s like out here. This may be obvious, but one of the overwhelming feelings you get out here is just how small people and cities are compared to the landscape. It just goes on forever, and surrounds you — no matter what you do, you feel very, very small. It’s a great feeling, and makes you feel part of the natural world more than anything else I’ve ever done.
• Riverside, WY and the Riverside Store. Riverside is a town of about twenty people…the picture you see is just about the entire place. It’s also the biggest destination for fifty miles in any direction. I had a great conversation with the woman who runs the store; she seems to love talking to all the people who ramble through: since this is on a back road, I suspect it’s only the more adventurous and interesting folks from all about the continent (and world) that make it here. I bought a T-shirt that says “Riverside General Store, Riverside, WY” on the front…we’ll see if anybody ever recognizes it.
• Cowboy Bill. (See picture above.) This guy was hanging out at the general store — turns out he works at the Carbon County Visitor Center, across the street — and started a conversation with me about my car. He knows infinitely more than me about every possible kind of car, including 1960s Ferraris and exotic Italian brands… We ended up talking (not just about cars, but about anything and everything) for almost an hour. He introduced himself as “Cowboy” at first, then: “Bill, but everybody calls me Cowboy. There are too many Bills around here.” Cowboy Bill has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from USC (no, I promise I am not making this up) and is one of the most gregarious, most curiously interesting people I’ve met in my entire life.
• Driving in the pitch-black night amidst torrential rain and lightning all around me as I meandered down into the Flaming Gorge, on the Wyoming/Utah border. It was both a little scary and enormously thrilling being in the middle of all that power…I had no idea what it looked like, but I knew I was in a beautiful area in the middle of nowhere.
• Managing to put up my tent, singlehandedly, in the pitch black with wind whipping around me with a bit of rain mixed in. Note to those trying: using your tent stakes early and often is critical. ;-)
• Falling asleep there to the sounds of the wind and the rain and listening to the group of college kids at the next site over debating whether they should go skinny-dipping or not. (I think they backed down and wore suits in the end. Wimps.) The world around me was alive, and I was content…

Day 10: (Monday, August 13, 2007) Estes Park, CO to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, WY/UT.
Miles: 3576.4 + 462.0 = 4038.4 total. Current distance from home: 896 miles.
Photos: 1,595 (21.5 GB) + 278 (3.68 GB) = 1,873 (25.2 GB) total.
Next up: more of the Flaming Gorge, northeast Utah, and points beyond…