Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Lincoln to Laramie


July 20

Said good-bye to Old Paint this morning and left Cheyenne for the short trip to Laramie.

We were on a section of Interstate 80 that is also U.S. 30, the Lincoln Highway. And it never fails.

The first curiosity was Tree Rock. We were barreling along when we saw a sign that said “point of interest.” That gave me time to slow down to get into the turnoff lane. 



Just as the name suggests, it is a tree that appears to be growing directly from an isolated outcrop of solid rock. It’s a small, twisted pine and was first noted about 150 years ago during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, which passes not far north of the spot.

We also came to the highest point (8,640 ft.) on Interstate 80. The highest point east of the Mississippi is somewhere between the two exits for Clearfield, Pa., in the neighborhood of Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub. 



This one in Wyoming is the unqualified highest and is about 6,000 feet higher than the point in Pennsylvania.

There is a monument to Lincoln—a large bronze bust on a stone pedestal that may be 30 feet high—looking over the highway named for him. It was put up in 1959 by an art professor at the University of Wyoming.

The monument was originally at the highest point of the old Lincoln Highway, and was later moved to watch over the highest point on the new route.

Nearby is another monument, which has the questionable distinction of carrying a typo etched in stone:

“In memory of Henry B. Joy, first president of the Lincoln Highway Association, who saw realized the dream of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” 

All I can guess is that a committee couldn’t choose between the plain English “saw” and the Latinate “realized.” They must have rushed the text to the stone cutter before they reached consensus, or did any proof reading.



Joy was also head of Packard Motor Car Co., so he had more than a passing interest in promoting the use of cars.

The monuments are now at the Summit Rest Area and Visitor Center, about 10 miles east of Laramie. Aside from maps and tourist brochures, the visitor center has a small museum.

We learned, for instance, that there may be more pronghorn sheep than people in Wyoming. There are about a half million of each. 

There is a wall recapping the history of the Lincoln Highway. The route was dedicated in 1913, following a lot of historical routes including the Mormon Trail, an early turnpike in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and an old Indian trail. 

In the ’20s the federal government began to number national highways, and the Lincoln Highway became U.S. 30.



It’s named for Lincoln because he supported transcontinental transportation projects. He didn’t live to see the railroad and certainly didn’t have automobiles in mind, but the builders of the highway felt that it was an extension of Lincoln’s vision.

There is a wall about lawman and outlaws. Now, this may mean something to those of us who remember “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

In one scene of the movie, Paul Newman and Robert Redford stop a train to rob it. A boxcar opens and several mounted horsemen leap out. The outlaws escape, but only after a desperate chase. Very comical stuff, all of it.

But it was actually based on something serious—heavily armed lawmen, horses and all, hiding in boxcars. A deputy marshal dedicated himself to tracking down the Wild Bunch, Cassidy’s gang, but never succeeded. One of his tactics was to have a posse in a boxcar to fight train robbers.

The marshal was Joe Lefors, the same guy who arrested Tom Horn and shot the six-gun out of Al Smith’s hand at Hole-in-the-Wall. The museum has a photo of him and his posse.



Lefors is the guy in the dark suit without a moustache.

After we checked into the Days Inn, we went to Down to Earth, the dry cleaner I found in a Google search a couple of days ago. I pulled into a shopping center parking lot to see if the store was there. 

It wasn’t and we were pretty sure I had missed it and driven too far. 

Joanna noticed that this was the same parking lot where we checked directions on our way to Fort Collins. Deja vu all over again.

We went to the Altitude Chophouse in Historic Downtown. It’s a brew pub. 

The waiter recommended a barramundi in a complicated sauce that included Asiago cheese. Joanna decided to give it a try. 

She had tried fish a couple of times before on this trip. She even had walleye, the state fish, in South Dakota, but she found the dishes disappointing. 

This one, on the other hand, was very good. The fish was tender and had a pleasant, mild flavor, which was complemented by the cheese sauce.

I had the Altitude altbier, an amber ale, that was one of the best ales I’ve met in a while. It has a nutty flavor that I associate with European, usually English, ales.

It was so good that I didn’t bother to switch around. Joanna loved it, too, and helped me finish one pint, so I ordered another of the same.

The gravy on my roast chicken was made with the same ale, so the pairing was dead on.

The bar packages its beer to go. A half-gallon growler was a bit much even for me. I got two 32-ounce cans, one for tonight and one for another time. 

I’m working on the American pale ale. It’s very good. It has the dry edge of a good pale, but a strange delivery that is sharp and creamy at the same time. 

I didn’t make this up, but I firmly believe it: Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Good night and good beer to all.

Harry



Monday, August 29, 2016

Horn Aplenty




July 18-19

Day two in Cheyenne was a week day, so we got into the state museum. 

Before that, though, Joanna wanted to get her nails done. We went to the nail salon in the local Wal-Mart. 

While Joanna was being filed and polished, I walked the grocery aisles. I bought apples, avocados, and bananas for smoothies, which is what we generally have for lunch. 

It think it’s purification before we launch into dinners that are usually built around beef or other red meat. The food is better out here than I expected, but so far in our experience, has been limited in diversity.

The beer is good, though. 

The state museum has exhibits on Amerindians and the emigrant trails, of course, but also on coal mining, animals, the construction of the Capitol building, and other specialties of the region. 

It has a case that contains Tom Horn’s shoes. Horn apparently gave them to a judge the night before he was hanged. That is, before Horn was hanged, not the judge. 



Horn was an Indian fighter who became a hired gunfighter and claimed he was a stock detective, a private eye hired to stop rustlers. He took part in a range war near Cheyenne and was convicted of killing a 14-year-old boy in the rival group. Exit Tom Horn.

He is one of Wyoming’s favorite bad boys. There is, though, a photo of another famous Wyoming bandit, Butch Cassidy, near the entrance to the museum.



The samples of Indian beadwork in the museum are fascinating. There is a cradleboard with an intricate rose pattern rendered in glass beads that is almost realistic.

A pair of cowboy boots is completely covered in beadwork. I have no idea how that was done.



Fossils are also big business out here. At one time, this was prime dinosaur territory. Did Adam and Eve hunt dinosaurs out here? I haven’t found any Creationists to ask about that. But dinosaur bones have been fossilized all over the place.

The Wyoming coal deposits are fossilized swamps where the dinosaurs used to roam.



After an hour or two of museum strolling, we were bushed and went back to the hotel to rest. Joanna is fascinated by the Republican National Convention, so we had that on the TV.

We went back downstairs for dinner. I had a basic hamburger. Joanna had an interesting dish of brandied chicken. The brandy is fired and turned into a sauce. 

Joanna offered me a sample. It was remarkably good—surprisingly so, because the chicken was cooked without skin or bone. It was even tender. 

I wish they had a Mayor of Old Town up here. The beers at the hotel are bottled, mostly canned. Those I drank tonight were good, but all save one were the same as last night. 

The only experiment was a brown ale from the Black Tooth Brewing of Sheridan, Wyo. For some reason (because it’s Wyoming, I guess) it’s called Saddle Bronc. OK, but like a lot of browns, a little too sweet for my taste.

Tuesday morning, the 19th, we wanted to clear out of the hotel before they started testing the fire alarms. We had been warned that it would begin around noon in the tower with the guest rooms.

But we were given an even more urgent reason to get going when a nose pad fell off Joanna’s glasses.

A Google search turned up a one-hour service called Quick Draw Optical. 

Yes, really. I’m sending photographic evidence.



The lady at the store took about two minutes to replace the broken pad with a new one.

We went back to the state museum to revisit a few of the exhibits, mainly Old West stuff, Indian artwork, and fossils this time. 

Tom Horn’s shoes, by the way, are in the same case with a revolver that “was shot out of the hand of Al Smith by Joe LeFores during the Hole-in-the-Wall fight in 1897.”

I think that’s a reference to Joe Lefors, the deputy marshal who arrested Horn.

Our next stop was the Laramie County Courthouse. It stands on the site of the older courthouse and jail where Tom Horn was tried and hanged.

The town has occasional displays in the shape of large cowboy boots decorated by local artists. West Orange, N.J., has a similar program involving lightbulbs because Edison’s lab was there. Didn’t New York have one involving, for some reason, cows?

One in front of the state museum uses a motif that takes parts of designs from old Wyoming license plates. The one in front of the courthouse is devoted to Tom Horn. You’re surprised, right?



There is a Tom Horn exhibit on the second floor of the new courthouse. It consists of archive photos and a brief recap of the events leading up to the trial and execution. 

You could consider this an official account, because it’s in a courthouse and was approved by a judge. Even this version admits there is reasonable doubt that Horn killed the 14-year-old son of a sheepherder. The exhibit, we read, is a matter of feet from where the gallows stood.



Lefors, the deputy marshall, interviewed Horn when he was drunk and had the conversation transcribed. I have not yet found the text of the transcript, but it is described as a meandering drunken boast. 

The marshall’s office was behind one of the bay windows of a building that now houses the Wyoming Home furniture store on the Lincoln Highway.

Definitely one of my favorite roads. There is always something curious on it whenever I have traveled it.

Dinner was at the Albany Restaurant, Bar, and Liquormart, at the foot of Capitol Street, across from the depot.

We were just about to go in when we heard a few gunshots and knew the Gunslinger show was in progress. They were going to hang a guy (I don’t know why) and drew the jury from the audience. 

The marshal showed up and said it was illegal. “But he showed up for a gun fight dressed like that.” The marshal offered to shoot him.

Instead, they gave him a straw cowboy hat to make him look more Western, T-shirt and Bermuda shorts notwithstanding.

Back at the Albany, Joanna had some very good fried chicken, and I opted for seasoned pork chops, a little on the salty side, but still good.

The New Belgium 1554 black ale tastes very much like Guinness. I had a Guinness, too, to compare.

We went across the street to the Accomplice bar in the depot. They give you a key card that you put in a slot over the tap, and you can pour your own beer.

We tried four or five brews, two or three ounces at a time. The best of the lot were the Epic Tart N Juicy IPA (which I had the day before), Left Hand Brewing’s Sawtooth Amber, and Coal Creek rye IPA.

I’m not usually fond of rye ales, but this one was very good. I think the heavy hopping of an IPA balanced the strange bitterness of the rye.

I’m back at the room now with a couple of IPAs that I picked up at the bar downstairs. I just finished the Odell IPA out of Fort Collins and am about to attack the Black Tooth Brewing Co.’s Hot Streak, from Sheridan, Wyoming.

The local beers here are all adequate to damned good. These two are close to the good end of the spectrum.

So like Santa Claus says, a good beer to all and to all a good night.

Harry



Hello, Old Paint



July 15-17

We rode into Cheyenne today, but came by way of Fort Collins.

We left Casper on Friday. Tired of the Interstates, I decided to take a route that included state highways, and got us lost about 15 miles out.

We were tearing along Wyoming Highway 220 for most of an hour. I asked Joanna to check the directions. How far are we supposed to travel before we turn left onto Wyoming 487?

Eighteen miles, she said. 

I knew that was far behind us.

It took me at least half an hour to get back on track. So a drive of three hours and change grew close to five.

We found the turn, and got as far as Medicine Bow, a kind of ghost town, in southern Wyoming. The town grew up with the transcontinental railroad and was a fairly prosperous place once. Interstate 80 bypassed it, and unlike KFC, nobody had a white suit to help promote the local fried chicken, so it went into decline.

Its sign lists a population of 284, but the town has a large hotel called the Virginian, which may be named for the Owen Wister novel, which was written in the town. The hotel is a state landmark.

There is a fence that provides a backdrop for an extensive display of folk sculpture. There is also a substantial senior center.



We picked up the Lincoln Highway, one of my favorite roads, at Medicine Bow. Actually, there are few paved highways out here, so routes often overlap for extended distances. In this case, U.S. 30 East and U.S. 287 South were the same road.

The route, which follows the trail that Chivington’s men used when they committed the Sand Creek Massacre, took us to Laramie. We stopped at a Safeway to buy fruit and chia seeds for smoothies. We also compared the written directions, which were about to get complicated, with the map. It was an official state highway map and I couldn’t find the routes. 

So this called for a quick change of plans. It was back to the Interstates.

We backtracked half a mile and took I-80 east to Cheyenne and I-25 south to Fort Collins. We stayed in a La Quinta right off the Interstate.

About four miles down the highway is the turnoff to Old Town. This is the part of town where all the bars are. It was packed, and not knowing the town, I prowled around several blocks until I found a parking space around the corner from the Rescue Mission.

The streets of Old Town are lined with trees, which is uncommon for this part of the world. There is angled parking on both curbs and also in the center of the street, forming a traffic island. They were all fully occupied on Friday night.
FtCollins2

Most of the businesses are boutiques, craft beer bars, ice creameries, antique shops, and the like. Mixed in are a large Ace Hardware franchise, a few thrift stores, and a Sports Authority going out of business.



We were looking for a brew pub that nobody seemed to have heard of. I found out later that’s because I had the name wrong.

We went into the Crown Pub. Jack T., who has been to Fort Collins several times, told me that of the 13 breweries in the area Odell and Horse & Dragon were reputed best. 

The Crown had both. Odell’s IPA has a good, bitter flavor, but not as much aroma as I expect from an India pale ale. Horse & Dragon was represented by a session IPA. 

I had them with a plate of chicken and stuffed rellenos, smothered in  cheddar. Joanna had grilled New York strip served on top of pita and covered with a Gorgonzola cream sauce. 

My dish was a little too hot for Joanna, but I sampled the steak in sauce, which was delicious.



The main reason we drove to Fort Collins was to see Jack T., who was up from Santa Fe with his wife, Sunny, to visit her son and daughter-in-law and her new grandchild. Jack met us at the hotel around 11 on the 16th and we took off for Old Town again.

The streets of Old Town are just as full on Saturday morning as they are on Friday night. Somebody must have picked up brunch to go, because a pickup pulled out of the center parking island just ahead of us.

One problem solved. We got out and tried to find a pub called the Mayor, which advertises 100 taps. I wanted to find it and go back that night for dinner.

It took some doing. It’s full name is the Mayor of Old Town, although it is a couple of blocks south of Mulberry Street, which is on the map as the southern border of Old Town. But 100 taps. Who’s going to quibble?

It was early to get into serious beer drinking, only a little after noon. But we stopped in for a quick one. I couldn’t believe it. There was a Horse & Dragon red IPA, This is an American craft brewing innovation—an Irish red style ale hopped like India pale. Brew rarely gets better than that.

I nursed that and we all three shared a soft pretzel. 

Somewhere in our wanderings we mentioned Medicine Bow and its senior center. Jack told us that a lot of these microscopic towns are cheap places to live on Social Security checks. Out of 284 people, most of them could be retired. 



I guess there’d be a bigger need for a senior center than for a grammar school. Cheaper, too.

Later, as we were browsing in the Old Firehouse bookstore, Joanna confided that she was getting hungry. A third of a pretzel wasn’t doing it. 

We found a bar where she and I shared a plate of roast pork with black beans and rice. 

Later, Jack, who was going to join his family for dinner, dropped us off at the hotel, where I took a rest. I fell asleep and woke up thinking it was morning.

But I was pleasantly corrected when I realized it was time to go out for another beer.

Joanna wanted more black beans and rice. She had noticed during our earlier wanderings a restaurant called the Blue Agave on College Avenue. Fine with me.

This time, we followed signs for public parking, and wound up in a parking garage. It cost a dollar an hour. Had I known that sooner, it would have saved a lot of prowling the streets looking for an open slot.

The parking garage is a smoke-free facility, so the sign, in order to be thorough, included a ban on tobacco, vapes, and cannabis.




We had a long wait for a table, so we went outside and watched kids playing in a fountain. Every once in a while it shoots a 6- or 8-foot arc of water out of the sidewalk toward a rock that catches it. 

The kids dodge under the arc. They stand on the outlet and use their feet to aim the spray at each other. There are also other, smaller geysers in the sidewalk, that spout periodically, so  walking across this little square requires care.



There was a woman with two children playing music on the College Avenue side of the square, and a teenage girl playing exquisite violin on the other side.

We weren’t in the mood for any of the entrees, so we wound up putting dinner together out of small dishes—appetizers and sides. 

We had a house salad that include candied pecans, jicama, and Mandarin oranges besides two kinds of lettuce. We had guacamole, black beans, cilantro rice, cornbread, grilled squash. A variety of little dishes, all very good.

I had another good local ale, but can’t remember the name.

This morning, the 17th, we had less than an hour’s travel to our destination, in Cheyenne, which is less than 50 miles from Fort Collins. Out here, that’s right next door.

But first I had to stop at a dispensary called Choice Organics. It’s about a half-mile from La Quinta. There are two entrances. I used the one that labeled “recreational.” There was another marked “medicinal.”

Inside, you draw a number, wait to be called, and show your ID with proof of age, before you are let into the actual store. A budtender is there to answer your questions.

We got to Cheyenne too early. The Radisson could put us into a room, but we wanted a refrigerator, and none of those rooms was ready yet when we got there shortly after noon.

So I went down the road to find the Outlaw Saloon, not for a drink, but just to confirm where it is. It’s maybe a half mile walk from the hotel. They have sidewalks here.

Then we headed downtown. 

We found the state museum, which was closed, and the state capitol, which was being fixed. Well, it was covered with what appeared to be scaffolding. But what do I know? I’ve never been here before. Maybe it’s designed to look like that.



We were parked in front of an official-looking building. We thought at first it was the museum but then weren’t sure. I think it was a courthouse.

Anyhow a friendly security guard came by and gave us directions to the museum. As we were driving away, she stopped us and told us that the depot has interesting attractions, including a horse-drawn carriage tour.

Where’s that? Take any of the one-way streets headed south.

We got onto Central, and damn, it took us to the right place.

Depot plaza is in a historic stone building, which is the second or third rail station built by Union Pacific in Cheyenne. The previous stations burned down. The floor has a map that recaps the building of the transcontinental railroad.

There is also a bar with self-serve taps similar to those in the Pour bar at Asheville. It was early, so I used my card to pull a sour ale called Tart N Juicy (I had originally read the hand-written sign to say Tart in July). It wasn’t as tart as I like sour to be, but was still good.

We didn’t get onto the horse-drawn trolley. Maybe we’ll get a chance tomorrow or Tuesday.

It was three, so we went to the Radisson to check in and rest.

We had steaks at the restaurant in the hotel. Joanna ordered a New York strip without any signature seasoning. I had a top sirloin with some kind of sauce. I could tell the beef was damned good, so it would have been better without the treatment.

With dinner, I had a couple of ales from Wyoming Black Tooth Brewery in Sheridan. The Caught Lookin’ blonde ale was almost citrusy and was sharp from the hops. The Hot Streak IPA was OK. but it wasn’t full-bodied and, surprisingly, not as sharp as the blonde.

I was not driving, so I had no incentive to behave. I took Joanna to the bar to watch TV and watch me drink more beer. The Odell porter is OK. I’m not a fan of porters, but I wanted a change. 

We watched bull riders at the Cheyenne rodeo. No sound, so it may have been live or recap for all I could tell. Then the program changed to golf.

We tried to find a soccer match, but the only one was from Mexico and the TV wasn’t signed up for that.

We did find women’s college wrestling on one of the multitude of Fox sports channels. I have no idea how they score the game, but it was fun to watch. 

My second drink at the bar was Alaska amber ale. Good, and like ambers, kind of nutty flavor. 

I got an Odell IPA to take to the room, and that’s almost gone, so I’m going to have to sign off.

Good riding to all and to all a good night

Harry



Saturday, August 27, 2016

Trail Bumming




July 12-14

We left Custer for Casper, Wyoming, on the 12th and part of our route followed the Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail, which was used as a stagecoach route. Besides suffering from the natural elements—flood, dust, wind, etc.—and the occasional Indian attack, the coaches also fell prey to “ruthless road agents,” one historical marker told us.

Indeed, we stopped later at a rest area that was built near the grave of a stagecoach driver. 

Another marker stood at the former site of Fort Jenney (sometimes simplified to Jenny). The fort was built in 1875 by a group sent by President Grant to confirm the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. Walter Jenney was a geologist who was one of the leaders of the group.

It stood a long while, served as a stagecoach station for a time, and later as a home on the LAK Ranch. It was later moved to the Anna Miller Museum in Newcastle, Wy.

So of course, I had to see it. The fort is actually a log cabin outside the museum, which itself is housed in a former Wyoming National Guard Cavalry stable.

Anna Miller, for whom the museum is named, is regarded as on of the resilient pioneer women. Her husband. Billy Miller, was sheriff. He was killed in a fight with Sioux in 1903. Get this: the Indians were suspected of poaching.

Needing to support herself, she became a teacher, then superintendent of schools for the county, and was an all-round pillar of the community. Not sure, but she may have taught in the one-room schoolhouse next to Fort Jenney on the museum grounds.



We also stopped at Ayres Natural Bridge, which is in a county park not far from I-25, a few miles east of Douglas, Wy. (It’s sometimes spelled Ayers, but r before e seems to prevail.) According to a diagram, the stream that races through the park originally went in a horseshoe bend, but over a long time, it eventually undercut the rock wall until part of it collapsed to create a shorter route for the stream to follow.

We reached Custer sometime late in the afternoon and were surprised at the size of the place. Compared with Wall, Kadoka, and Philip, it’s a pretty big place—about 50,000 people. 

When we got to the Quality Inn in Custer, we asked about places for dinner. I wanted craft beer. We were warned that the premier spot, Wonder Bar, would be jammed all night because this was the day of the big rodeo parade.

The Fort, on the other hand, was a short walk away, so we went there. We got our first chance to sample Rocky Mountain Oysters. They are breaded and fried, a little on the chewy side, but much better than the gizzards we tried at the Badlands Bar in Wall.

We also had another regional specialty, buffalo rib-eye. It was remarkable tender for a low-fat meat. 

I still don’t find a tremendous difference in flavor between bison and beef. 

Bison’s not as different from beef as lamb or venison, the other red meats, are. Part of the appeal is that it is exotic by our standards back East, and maybe is a little better for our arteries.



Next morning, we went up the hill about a mile from the Quality Inn to the National Trails Center. It is a museum that recounts the history and culture of four trails that crossed the North Platte River at present-day Casper: the Oregon, California, Mormon, and Pony Express Trails.



The Oregon Trail took people to a purported land of milk and abundance in the far West. The California Trail led to the Gold Rush country. The Mormons were headed for Salt Lake City. 

After the Gold Rush increased the population of California, the Pony Express carried mail—for about a year and a half before the telegraph put them out of business.

The trails pretty much followed the Oregon Trail until they started to divide a little west of Casper toward their separate destinations.

We met a man in the parking lot outside the motel who gave us directions to Old Town. It’s a pleasant enough place to stroll. 

It is contained in about four city blocks—two on Center Street and two on Second—and looks like something built in the first half of the 20th century, not as old as some of the buildings in Custer, which date back to the 1880s.



It has the feel of a town center brought back from decay. There are business and government offices, but also places selling art or cowgirl clothes, and lots of restaurants. There are three old movie houses in those four blocks, so movies must be popular here.

For dinner we went to J’s Pub and Grill, on what I believe is the town’s west side. We shared an appetizer of pot stickers, which were close to Cantonese fried dumplings. 

We also split a dinner of buffalo meat loaf. It had an unusual flavor because the meat included green olive, in addition to an appropriate amount of chopped onion.

There was an amber ale that wasn’t very satisfying, but I was able to resort to an old standby on tap—Goose Island IPA. A couple of those set me right up.

On one of our trips in this direction, Joanna was able to get this shot of an old-fashioned oil derrick standing by the road as a monument.



On the 14th, to celebrate Bastille Day, we went to Fort Caspar Museum. The fort was built to protect a bridge over the North Platte River. 



The bridge is why all those trails congregated here. In the earliest pioneer days, people had to ford the river here. Many of them didn’t make it. 

When Brigham Young led the first excursion of Mormons toward the Great Salt Lake, he and his crew established a ferry here. 



They cut two logs in the shapes of canoes and put a platform on them. It was guided by ropes secured on both banks. It worked well, and Young assigned a team of men to stay and operate it.

It would serve later Mormon parties, and would carry others for a fee.

The bridge started out as private enterprise, too. A man named Louis Guinard built it as a toll bridge, and also opened a trading post. The site later became a stagecoach stop, a Pony Express station, and a telegraph office. 



In the early 1860s the cavalry came to protect the telegraph station and the bridge.

A large war party of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho attacked the bridge in 1865. A small cavalry force under Lt. Caspar Collins went out to reinforce a wagon train that was due to arrive. Collins’s command was overwhelmed by the Indians.

He and a few others were killed, and the rest of the column was driven back across the bridge to what was then known as North Platte Station. The wagon train caught hell too.



Later that year, the station was renamed Fort Casper. The orders misspelled the lieutenant’s name. (Another of the variant spellings we’ve met over the past few days.) They used his first name, because there already was a Fort Collins, the one in Colorado, named for the Caspar’s father.

We ran into a colorful character at the museum. He and I recognized each other because we’re both hard to miss and had been at the trails museum at the same time the day before.

He and his wife live pretty much the way I do. They sold their house and move around the country from town to town. 

He’s originally from Minnesota but lived in San Antonio most recently. That’s where they keep the POD that holds their belongings. 

He wears a large straw cowboy hat with a feather in the band and wildly printed cowboy shirts. He has been on the road for about six years.

Although he walks in and out, he tours the museums in a wheel chair. 

When he learned Joanna is Chinese, he went on about his love of Chinese food, and how successful Chinese are, and how smart. You take the top quarter of the Chinese population and it’s about equal to the entire population of the United States. 

His son has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and when he got his degree, most of the other successful candidates were Chinese or Indian.

He once traveled to New York and spent a few weeks in Peekskill. He is part Dutch and wanted to learn about the Dutch in America.

He tried driving around Manhattan for a few days, but gave it up in favor of the train.

You get the idea. Way more information than I could hold in my head, but he was fun to talk to.

His wife says she plans to live forever and when her husband dies, she may have the POD sent to her son’s driveway in Albuquerque and take an apartment in the area.

Looking at the word count, I see that this, too, is too much information. So I’ll end this, and go look for beer.

Happy trails, all.

Harry