Wild West Country

These are my first notes from our 6 week NW USA and British Columbia trip, taking in the Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Oregon and Washington State and finishing in Vancouver.   We’re really pleased that we get to spend two weeks or so with our friends Bonnie and Newt from Massachusetts who join us after a week or so when we get to the Grand Tetons. 

The most convenient hub airport for us was Denver, a mere 500 mile drive from the Grand Tetons, named by French miners or trappers depending on your source material.  Grand Tetons translates as Big Breasts so it is just a matter of conjecture what these Frenchies were thinking about after months in the wilderness.  This time I brought something that I’d never taken on any trip before.  Appearing the day before we left, it was an attack of Gout which was fortunately relatively mild.  So wearing just one pair of thin socks I managed to wear my walking boots for the flight and spent the first four or five days as a tenderfoot.  

Denver turned out to be a pleasant surprise because we weren’t expecting much but with sunshine, blue skies and a splendid free bus service in the centre it turned out to be just right for a post-flight 7 hour timezone acclimatisation.  The ‘not expecting much’ wasn’t just me being grouchy but the guide book we saw which listed the main attractions as all being outside the city.  At the city end of the airport transfer lies the old railway Union Station, a beautiful and vast echoing hall thankfully preserved and restored.  Our walking was understandably limited but there is a dramatically angular art gallery which is well worth a visit the next time you’re in Denver.   I’m always surprised in the States by the number of places with free public transport around the centre and that even outside that the bus fares are cheap, much cheaper than England.   An all-day ticket costs $5.20 which in these post-Brexit times is £4.  The Denver Mallrider free service runs from 5.30am (6.30am on Sunday) to 1am and during the day runs every 90 seconds to 2 minutes.   One thing I did notice here was the number of women who sound like Bernadette in The Big Bang Theory for those you who watch it and for those who don’t they have voices that sound as if the owner had taken a swig of helium just before speaking.   Maybe it’s the altitude.  Denver calls itself the mile-high city (cue for snigger) because it is, or one of the steps on the Capitol building is exactly one mile above sea leave.  No I don’t know if that’s high tide or low tide.

Leaving Denver, heading north and then North West with Heather doing all the driving while my foot rested we stop for the night at Laramie, a name which a number of you will remember as an early 1960s cowboy show on TV.   Two brothers try to save the ranch after their father dies etc. etc.  They managed to make this rather thin plot last for four seasons and more than thirty episodes.  Well, did they save the ranch or not?  Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn, which I think would make a great ending for a film sometime.   I think my brother Colin’s suggestion for the programme is better than I could suggest, so here it is. “fraid I remember Laramie by name only but my guess is it involved a wanted man, black hat, riding black horse into town, having a whisky or two, cheating at cards, insulting the local talent, smashing up the bar, turning all the furniture into matchwood over people’s heads before being thrown through a window or swing door onto a very dusty street, later escaping from jail, he's hunted down by a reluctant sheriff and posse.  Horse and hat might have been brown, as it was in black and white.”   Come to think about it, that’s just about every cowboy show ever made, although he doesn’t mention injuns.

Laramie the town is quite pleasant, mostly two stories high with the centre having lots of brick built shops probably dating from the early 1900s to mid-century.  A centre that hasn’t had the odd building knocked down and the gap filled with a modern out of character replacement.  These are the sort of small American towns we like, with the sort of civic pride often missing in England.   It was here I got my first “ah jest lurve your axcent” to which my reply is always (with a smile) “but I don’t have an accent, you do”.  It usually gets a laugh but how many say “smartarse” as they turn away I don’t know.  If anybody asks, they always think we’re Australian apart from someone a day or two back who thought we were German.   

Laramie is in Wyoming and if you like wide open spaces, y-min is jest the place for you.  The wideness is wider and the openness is opener and the spaces are spacier, with huge skies.   There are mile upon mile of treeless, gently undulating, scrubby sagebrush prairie country with hills on the horizon.  It’s no surprise that this is cattle country but the grazing looks very poor and we don’t see many cattle.  Wyoming is nearly twice the size of England and the least populous US state with fewer than 600,000 inhabitants.  About ten per cent of that meagre number live in the capital Cheyenne.  

We’ve travelled 300 miles from Denver to Dubois WY and been through only three decent sized towns, that’s how empty it is, so we don’t run the tank too low.  Dubois is pronounced Dew Boys, like Theydon Bois for those of you familiar with Essex places.  It’s a small place (pop. 1000) strung along the interstate highway on the way to the Tetons, which is where we’ll meet Bonnie and Newt.  A noticeboard by the roadside claims that Butch Cassidy bought a farm here with the proceeds of a bank raid and at a museum piece of a general store a notice claims that he shopped there as well.  I think the owner may well have served Butch himself.   East of the Rockies, we are at altitude at around 7000 feet up, so while the daytime sunshine is fierce and high in UV rays, the temperature plummets in the shade and the evening.  Snow is a forecast possibility for Tuesday.   Strange to think we’re wandering around at considerably more than twice the height of Snowdon.

This is busy time in the Tetons and Yellowstone, towards the end of the season, trees changing colour, probably snow on the tops to bump up the picturesque-ness but before the parks are closed by the winter snows.  Wet air from the west is channelled up onto this high cold plateau and falls as snow, lots of snow.  So Newt had booked accommodation at Jackson for us all and then had to rebook when a forest fire burnt our cabins out.  Still at least it was before we arrived.

PS  Gout virtually gone !