Following our wondrous time at the bison ranch we headed over to Gillette, WY where we stayed at another of our Harvest Host stops - the Our Wyoming Life Ranch. We parked next to some adorable cows and horses. They made for EXCELLENT neighbors - so much so that we made sure to keep our windows open at night to be able to hear "nature's soundtrack"! We were able to take a tour of the ranch the next day and meet the baby chicks & baby turkeys (as well as their grownup cohorts), peacocks, pigs and about 120 beef cattle. I included a video here of the beautiful peacock strutting his stuff because he is A) pretty damn gorgeous and B) a hoot trying to impress the hens! At the ranch they also grow vegetables - mostly to sell at their little farm stand and to donate in food boxes that they bring around town. These folks find really creative ways to give to their community and they donate A LOT! The owner has a You Tube Channel entitled, fittingly enough, "Our Wyoming Life". If you are interested in learning about the ranching life I highly (emphasis on HIGHLY) recommend you subscribe to his channel and/or watch it regularly or occasionally or AT LEAST ONCE! You will definitely appreciate the day to day workings and struggles of the ranchers. Plus, I could listen to him discuss paint drying - he is just plain interesting!
This year, northeast Wyoming is experiencing their worst drought in over 127 years. It was truly depressing as we drove around and saw all the burnt grass and feeding areas for the cows, horses, goats, sheep etc... The ranchers use whatever water they have on land for drinking for their herds and they now have to buy feed for the livestock. Unfortunately, state laws require permits for irrigation of over an acre of land - and the permits are very hard to come by. So they have to buy hay for their livestock and not only pay for said hay, but pay to have it delivered... South Dakota provides a lot of the hay, but they go through 22 tons of hay in about 10 days so, ummmm, you do the math!! ($$$$$) And given that there are droughts in Wyoming, Nebraska etc... the demand and cost of hay is out of control. Also, a lot of the ranchers need to sell their livestock for slaughter sooner than they would normally do because they have to thin out their herd for the winter (since they won't be able to afford to feed them as they don't have their own hay bales stored away). And, to add insult to injury, since most of the farmers and ranchers are in the same boat, they are not getting top price for their products... OK, I've depressed myself just typing this info - especially after seeing so many ranches and farms in action. So do me a favor and don't boycott meat when the prices go up in the near future!
From Gillette, WY we had a reservation for another HH stay in South Dakota. On our way we stopped in the cute little town of Hulett, WY which was a tiny town that was preparing for a big anniversary celebration. Unfortunately, we got there around noontime when they were just setting up for the bandstand and antique car shows and the like. However, we did stretch our legs, and I not only bought myself a malt at the malt shop but bought a jar of "beet jelly" from one of the Amish ladies who had set up a booth. They didn't have much in this tiny town, but they had a lot of pride and it made us smile! I also got to take a pic of their taxidermy shop which felt very Wyoming to me!
So we zipped back into SD (Spearfish to be exact) and stayed at the Crow Peak Brewing Company for a night in their parking lot. Yummy beer (which I had coincidentally bought a 6 pack of when we had first arrived in South Dakota). There was a BBQ place located across the parking lot where you could buy food and bring it into the restaurant to eat with your beer! It is interesting that a lot of the breweries and wineries that we've been to serve the bare minimum of snack-age...i.e., pretzels, while some live on the wild side and serve cheese and crackers too! We ended up pleased that there was no food here because they let Penny come inside on this VERY hot day and lay on their cool floor (which I'm thinking might not have been an option if food was served).
The next day it was back to WY. As we were driving down the highway we were again struck by the fact that we could be going 65'ish mph and HEAR THE BIRDS SING!!! It was a beautiful sound and we both agreed it was pretty amazing that we could hear them as they flew past us...Was it because there was no white noise of the city to drown their sound out? Perhaps it was because we had our windows down on the highway because of the wonderful quality of air that we wanted to breathe in? Or was it just that the damn birds are so damn happy in their beautiful surroundings that they were singing to their hearts content?!!!! We'll never know, but will remain in awe of the beauty of it! And to clarify - it wasn't every bird, but this one special sounding bird that we heard at various times in the area. Really memorable...
Our home base, Keyhole State Park, was relatively close to Devil's Tower - which was high on our "to do" list. We went to Devil's Tower on Tuesday June 15th. (FYI - Devil's Tower was the nation's First National Monument - designated as such in 1906.) We got to the park at 9AM and it had already heated up. We made the immediate decision to not even TRY to stroll Penny around the area because of the intensity of the sun and the heat in the air. Karl found a shady spot for the truck so we could sit outside with Penny and took turns going to see this natural wonder. During Karl's venture around the Tower he was excited to get a picture of "an opportunity of a lifetime" - a baby fawn nursing from her mother (pic included)! We also got to see our first prairie dogs which I had never seen before, (even in our visit to Colorado years ago where they were reportedly all over the place). They were cute little things and had amazing tunnels dug in their little "Prairie Dog Town" which is located on the driveway in/out of Devil's Tower. I unfortunately didn't get to hear them "bark", but was thrilled that my hubby hooked me up by pulling over to the side of the road so I could get a close up!
As you look at the pictures I've included you might be transformed back in time (1978 to be exact) to the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Well, if you remember the sculpted mash potatoes and the site of the spaceship - yep, this is where the movie was filmed! I’ve included a picture of the Devil’s Tower sign explaining the hypotheses of how it physically came to be. There are also many Native American legends explaining the Tower’s appearance. The version from the Kiowa Tribe is the most popular…it includes a giant bear and his claws scraping the sides of the Tower. It’s a cool story, but I don’t have time to repeat it here. (Remember bloggees & bloggettes - Google is your friend!)
The stay at Keyhole was HOT...Like 110 degrees without a cloud in the sky HOT. We didn't have any water or electric hook ups there so we had to be conservative (while still using our generators for VERY necessary AC!). The conditions although bone dry and sear-your-skin sunny, made for some amazing sunsets. This prompted the maiden voyage for my bathing suit; because that was the only way to survive the heat!
After 5 days at Keyhole we had one night at a Boondocker's Welcome site in Oshoto, WY. The place was named "Dog Camp" and was WAAAYYYYYY out of the way and off the beaten path. And with Dumb & Dumber driving, it ended up being an extra 2 hours out of the way. Our first mistake was when I told Karl to turn left at an intersection and he didn't really listen and automatically turned right. Then, since we were towing the trailer he didn't want to try a u-turn on the road and decided just to wait for the GPS to recalculate. Unfortunately, Einstein (that would be ME!) had programmed my Waze app to avoid highways (which made it easier to follow Rte 20 when weren't being tourists). So...yeah... um...2+ hours later we got to the place that was actually...um...30 minutes away from where we had been...This little detour unfortunately took us on a 22 mile dirt/under construction road that left inches (not kidding) of mud on our trailer and truck - so thick that a couple of days later it was still wet despite the 100+ degree weather!
But we eventually made it to this interesting little campsite. There was a creative little "outhouse" with curtains, an old dilapidated abandoned trailer, the remnants/leg of a dead deer that some wildlife had hunted and left behind and NO signs of civilization around our campsite. In the morning when we went for our family walk I brought my coffee with me and didn't bother changing out of my jammies because...I DIDN'T HAVE TO!!! (I've included a pic of me posing out in the field in my pj's for prosperity sake.) We did happen upon the edge of a field where cows were/had been grazing and came upon the bones of a cow that didn't make it through the winter... Needless to say, Penny was very intrigued! The rancher who owned the land stopped by to see us in the morning and was fun to chat with. He let us know that he had driven by the night before to make sure we had made it safely but didn't want to bother us...Thank heavens he didn't knock because the setting could've been construed as the setting for a horror flick and I'm pretty sure a coronary would have ensued if we'd had an unexpected visitor!
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