Wyoming: The State In America and of Mind

The story of Wyoming begins before I get on the plane. My Aunt Susie sent me and James the DVD for the The Red Rock Ranch so that we’d know what to expect. The DVD featured shots of mountains, red cliffs, grey cliffs, barbeques, families, fishing streams, horses, a square dance, and more all with this song that’s got to be called “Wyoming, Where I Belong” in the background. The song reminded me of the commercial from the Mexican tourist board that was always on back in the early 1990’s. Neither Google nor You Tube is giving me any help finding any mention of either of these songs, let alone lyrics or a video, but let me try to explain them.

Come to Me Mexico had this tanned lady singing with a lei around her neck, “Mexico! Come to me Mexico” while shots of Mayan ruins flew around. “Wyoming, Where I Belong” was pretty much the same thing except shots of the west, more acoustic guitar, and you don’t get to see the lady who singing the song. Anyway, after seeing the DVD I was pumped.

Flying into Jackson Hole is a wild ride. I was glued to the window more than I’ve been in a really long time. The airport is all by itself in the valley right up next to the Tetons. The landing is completely dramatic, as the plane comes in right next to the mountains. The surrounding area is way more green and colorful than I imagined. (By the way, I left my picture CDs in the car on the way to the airport, so hopefully they’ll send them to me. Got over 400, so I’ll splice those in when I get them). My impression of Wyoming before this trip was what you could see from Route 80 – grayish yellowish hot rolling hills. I’ve driven this road twice, and both times stopped in Little America only to swim in their pool. The Little America trips were both great, but they did little to prepare me for the real deal Wyoming.

Claire picked me and James up from the airport. In an effort to maintain 100% days swum per days spent in Wyoming, we hurried off to dip into the Snake River. That river is fast as hell, pretty refreshing, and jumping with kids and dogs. We had a damn good swim before going back to Claire’s to have ourselves a barbeque. Everything cooked pretty fast so my sauce didn’t reduce enough, but that was cool because the meat was good, the beets were great, and the smores later on even more kick ass. We sat around the campfire in Claire’s backyard, ate and drank, and eventually slept outside. These are the perks of life in Jackson.

The next morning we convened with the family and headed out to the Ranch. On the way out we checked out some buffaloes. Some say that the only real buffaloes live in Africa and that these are actually bison. Whatever. I know that when I was eating Buffalo Burgers at the Buffalo Inn in Upland, they were coming from the animals that used to roam the Great Plains in great numbers and now just kind of loaf around Wyoming a bit. If the Buffalo Inn is going to bank their business on the word “Buffalo,” I’m going to use it. Bison just doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

Somewhere north of Jackson, we cut off on a road that followed the Gros Ventre river. We found ourselves going past forests and cliffs of all colors. Whenever I think of the West from now on, this image is going to be a big part of it, but at the time it was completely new. The terrain was incredibly varied, with mountains peaking up in all over the place, the river, farmland, forests, and sage brush. Whenever the Tetons peaked up through the end of the valley, it was spectacular.

We stuck on that road for about twelve miles before turning off along Crystal Creek towards the Red Rock Ranch. Red Rock is the second to last ranch in the Gros Ventre valley, the last one being another twelve miles up the river. They have a four to one girl to guy ratio up there according to one of the ranch hands. I never did meet these four to one people, but rumors of them kept circulating and before I left Will the ranch hand apologized that we didn’t get to party with them. That’s ok Will.

About five minutes after getting out of the car, I wandered into the lodge to take advantage of the cookies and lemonade that were available all the time. In there I met two ladies – one a member of the kitchen crew, one a wrangler. The wrangler was named Candace and she was from Kentucky. She had lost her sense of smell from too many horse accidents, but remained thirsty for gossip from the outside world – no tv’s here, one phone line for the whole operation, and one computer with internet. This was when I realized that I’d be hanging out with people aside from my family (extended family is great, they just can’t chug as many beers as me when beer time comes along). This ranch did not only PG with lemonade and cookies, but full on R ratings too. They had a saloon with no bartender and the saloon was open 24 hours a day. My only instructions were to turn out the lights when I left. Sounds good to me.

Over the next two days, I found myself on a horse pretty much non-stop. We practiced a bit in the arena, with Pearson the head wrangler barking out at us as if we were some horse cavalry to do pinwheels and crosses. We rode out to a lake, to some amazing peak, and pretty much all over the place. While learning how to canter in the arena, Candace yelled at me until I stopped because I was leaning too far forward. If the horse stops cantering and you are leaning forward, you’ll get tossed off. This is how Candace got the concussions that took away her sense of smell, but she doesn’t remember it happening even once. After that, I decided to start leaning back as far as I could, which stopped me from getting yelled at and turned me more into a joke for looking like I was holding on for dear life. Forward or backwards, I think it’s hard to sit up straight in general, let alone while traveling at high speeds on a horse.

On Wednesday afternoon, two other guests and I tubed the Gros Ventre. There were rapids, cliffs to jump off, and nobody around. We saw three fly fisherman and one guy panning for gold with his scary looking dog. All three of us put holes in our tubes, but managed to stay afloat till the bitter end after three hours on this remote river. I walked away with a red belly and it was rad.

That night, the evening festivities started to get interesting. I wandered over to the crew cabins with Caroline, a really nice young wrangler. As soon as I walked over, the chef Eric offered me a flaming Dr. Pepper. First of all, I expected these guys to dip, drink Jack straight, and maybe wash down there whiskey and dip spit with beer. They did all these things, but they also made crazy concoctions like flaming Dr. Peppers. I can’t believe I had lasted 24 years before having one, but this was my first. Eric poured a bunch of 151 into a glass, topped it off with Amaretto, lit it up, doused out the flames with beer, and passed it my way. I was drunk before I even put the glass down. After lounging with the crew until their bedtime (they wake up at five thirty every morning unlike this seven am riser), I wandered to the saloon, where I met Doug and Dave MacKenzie, sons of the owners and former neighbors of my grandparents in Lake Forest. Doug is a 45 year old former helicopter pilot and current Hamm’s beer sign collector who dresses in Bermuda shorts with sailing belts, loafers with colored socks pulled up, colorful striped button down short sleeve shirts, has a skimpy little mustache, male pattern baldness, lives in Wisconsin, and refuses to use a computer. Dave, on the other hand, went from a fighting frat boy hockey player at CU Boulder to a fighting hippy hockey player to a nightclub owner to a producer of a documentary on the Abbey Road studios. Both these guys had grown up maintaining the Winnie the Pooh Woods my grandparents built (and still have) at their house, and as the night wore on they pulled out some great memories. Somewhere in there Eric the chef played power chords while Will the ranch hand freestyled and on occasion returned to the chorus for the classic tune “Suck on My Balls.” Later, the only true country yokel from the trip, mulleted Richard, the two MacKenzies and I played some serious pool and shut the place down.

On the last day, we gathered in the arena and split into teams of four. My team included James, Edie and Jay. Our task was to ride over to a bunch of steer, collect three of them (which three were yelled at us as we crossed a line), and bring them back into the pen in under three minutes. At one point we hit a minute eighteen (forty five seconds is a good time), but by the last round, we failed to qualify. Our last round was a disaster and a lesson in teamwork. Our task was to find two white tagged steer and a white faced steer. We had those three, plus a red tagged steer, and I led the charge as we pushed them down the fence towards the pen. The white face and the red tag split, followed by my teammates, leaving me with the two white tags. I didn’t want to lose them, so I tried to pen the two them myself. Solo penning is virtually impossible as far as I can tell, so I ended up just chasing them back towards the herd. My 18 year old horse, Chico, got tired and took a break where the non-competing teams were sitting. I kicked him, yelled, and by the time I trotted back to the crew, time was up. I’m not sure why everyone chased the red tag and white face. All we needed was one more steer. But once I took off on my own, it was pretty much over.

That night, we had a barbeque out on Crystal Creek, drank the night away at the crew cabin, and that was that. The next day James and I chilled with Claire in Jackson. It was a ton of fun. She drove us to the airport at five the next morning, and that was the end of Wyoming.