Wandering Through Wyoming

My sister Susan and I spend Labor Day driving through southern Wyoming.  Our goal was to visit both Saratoga, about which I have heard a lot a positive things, and Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming.  We drove from Susan's townhouse in Fort Collins, Colorado, to Laramie and then headed west through the Medicine Bow National Forest to Saratoga.  This drive was very scenic, and perhaps the highlight of the trip, but I have to say that I was pretty disappointed in Saratoga.  Writer C.J. Box centered one of his Joe Pickett mystery novels (The Disappeared) there, and other people I have talked to have sang Saratoga's praises. Granted, it was Labor Day, and a lot of stores were closed, but still, the place seemed pretty dead, and was much smaller than I thought.  The most historic building in town is the Hotel Wolf, in operation since 1893. I walked inside, and found the place pretty damn cramped.  I am sure it was considered a top drawer place in the 19th century, especially since this was after all the American frontier, but these days, I would go with Motel 6.

After walking around Saratoga's downtown with Susan and her two dogs - Blackberry and Tutu - we got back in the car and drove out to take a look at Bird Cloud, the summer home of Annie Proulx.  This is the home she built with the money she earned after winning the Pulitzer Prize for her book The Shipping News, and although she originally planned this to be her permanent home, she decided - after a winter or two in Wyoming - to make it just her summer home. I got the directions to Bird Cloud off the internet, but still was not sure where the entrance to the place was.  I stopped at the entrance to a ranch that looked very similar to a photo I had seen on the internet, and at least knew I was in the right neighborhood.  My sister and I both agreed that this was a hell of a place to build a home.  Of course, artists and writers are all eccentrics, and so I guess my attitude is "whatever floats your boat." Feel free to use that quote if you like.

As I mentioned, we drove from Laramie to Saratoga through Medicine Bow National Forest, climbing through the Snowy Range Mountains, and the scenery was spectacular.  Driving back to Laramie, however, I elected to take Interstate 80 to save a little time.  This took us across treeless - and endless - ranch land. As far as I can tell, Wyoming is filthy with cattle and windmills, but with not a single moose in sight.  When we got to Laramie, we drove through the 19th century era downtown and then parked and walked through the University of Wyoming campus, which is absolutely beautiful. Susan struck up a conversation with a woman who stopped to admire her two dogs, and discovered that she was a retired University of Wyoming English professor named Sandy, who still loves to walk through the campus (seen in the photo on the left) and enjoy it's atmosphere.  Susan and Sandy hit it off so well that she invited the two of us to come back any time and visit with her and her husband Ed.  Which speaks volumes about Laramie being one of those places that you don't think still exists in America.  After our visit to the campus, we headed back to Fort Collins.  It took me an hour and five minutes door to door, while it takes and hour and twenty minutes to get from my condo in Denver to Fort Collins.  And that for some reason truly shocks me - it is as if Fort Collins is just a heartbeat away from the Western frontier.