Wed., August 14 Medicine Bow, the Virginian, Casper

 Wednesday, August 14

Beautiful sunrise and the aspen seem to glow.

  And shortly thereafter, yesterday's deer is back.

We get a "Check Tire Pressure" message.  It looks a little low but we decide we can make it to Casper and there is a Discount Tire there (which is where we purchase our tires).

We decide to drive early this morning and stop to make breakfast somewhere along the way.  So we continue across the Sierra Madre Range and  cross the Continental Divide trail.

Out of the mountains, we find more open range and ranch land.   Seems that everyone is making hay, and stacking it.

Definitely where the deer and the antelope play!

We turn north to Saratoga, where we gas up and visit the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery. 

 Constructed in 1915, this hatchery currently produces between 5 and 7.5 million lake trout eggs and 3 million brown trout eggs.  We wander about the various ponds.

This man throwing food granules is the only person we see and he isn't interested in talking.  

It takes a year and a half for these small fry to reach 8 inches.  They had some large fish too.

The signage says they also breed endangered Wyoming Toads here, having released over 81K since 1999, but we didn't see any sign of them.

We walk to the nearby Silver Sage Ranch Wetlands along the river.  Ducks and a few other birds, plus some pronghorns in the distance.

 We pause in the parking area - we're the only ones here - to make blueberry pancakes and oranges for a tasty breakfast.

Next stop is the small town of Medicine Bow and the Medicine Bow Museum which is in an old railroad depot along route 80.

 We talk with the curator there for a bit.  He is an ex-marine but now looks more like a backcountry cowboy. He asks where we are from and talks about transporting torpedos from the west coast to Texas when he was in the service - the only time he's been to Texas.

A little bit of everything, including another sheep wagon, rocks, Indian artifacts, dinosaur discoveries, telegraph and railroad materials.  Outside is the log cabin where Owen Wister, the author of The Virginian,  lived.  Remember that TV show starring James Drury?

 

Route 80, the  Lincoln Highway,  earlier served as a route for the Pony Express riders and there is an old station nearby.

 Across the street is the 100 year old Virginian Hotel.  Beth pops in to see the interior where a couple of folks are having lunch. Old tin ceilings, fancy stairway and the obligatory mounted animal heads decor.

Many of the long straight stretches of highway have snow fences along them.  It is always windy here and the fences help keep the drifts off the highways.  A few places we have seen "living snow fences" where they have strategically planted tall bushes, but I assume they are difficult to keep alive due to the aridity. 

 We have also begun to see more wind turbines. Tim says Wyoming has many resources, including coal and natural gas, and wind technology is beginning to take off, though some oppose it.

From here, we went on to Casper which is one of Wyoming's larger cities at 60,000.  First stop is Discount Tire,  to get our "low tire"  checked.  They discover a nail as the culprit - ouch!  Fortunately Greg had gotten warranties on the new tires, so they had no problem just replacing it - yeah! Quick and easy! 

Next stop was a camera shop for a new battery charger.  The  two men there were very helpful   They said their shop was one of 2 camera shops in Wyoming, with the other being in Jackson Hole!  We purchased a kind of funky universal battery charger, but it works.  They suggested we check out Fremont Canyon in Alcova for photos.

The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, a nice, relatively new center just north of town was our next stop.  (Recommended by Tim.)  It deals mainly with the trails of the largest unforced migration in the world as 400,000 people made their west across the US. (It is between a US Forest Service building and one for Bureau of Land Management, both of which we visited briefly.)

The center focuses on the trails first used by Native Americans, then hunters and trappers, then the thousands who traveled by wagon train.  In 1843 the trickle of immigrants started and over the next years those trails became crowded highways!  The California, Oregon, and Mormon trails all came through Wyoming and then went their separate ways.   

The nearby North Platte River was a great landmark, as was Independence Rock a bit further west. The river doesn't look too daunting today, but damns and reservoirs have tamed it considerably.  We watch a film and check out the displays which show the hardships of wagon train travel.  Most of those 400,000 people walked a large part of the way.  Gathering food, keeping supplies from spoilage, illnesses, weather, hostile natives and more created incredible daily challenges.

 Displays about the Pony Express, too, and then the railroads which turned a 6 month journey into a week long ride.

We decided to stay in Casper for the night.  The first Walmart we tried was pretty noisy and crowded, so we moved on to one on the outskirts, off 220, that was much quieter.   Dinner was chicken and potato salad from their deli. Played a little cribbage tonight.