Goodbye Wyoming - Hello Colorado

I've now left Wyoming and am sitting in my hotel room in Denver. Does that mean I won't be going back to Casper? Don't know for sure. I've gotta get home and talk to my sweetie. Why would I go back? I don't have a job and didn't leave a deposit on the little house. (The realtor was off on Fridays so we didn't make contact). But hey, I don't have a job in Georgia either and you never know when someone might come along and want our home forever. We'll just have to see what happens later on this week.

When I left Casper, it was a beautiful day. (I am still amazed at how different the cold is out west and down south). I took off for my four hour drive to Denver with me, myself and I and made some notes along the way. One of the things that I still cannot comprehend it the ginormous amount of wide open spaces. If you were to take down the telephone poles in many places, you could visualize being back in the wild, wild west. Adding to the ambiance are the old homesteads that have been left abandoned for many years.

Also dotting the landscape are oil derricks scattered amid the sagebrush. Don't know what a derrick is...An oil derrick is a drilling rig designed for use in oil and natural gas production. The basic oil derrick has an upright stationary section which is potentially capable of supporting hundreds of tons of weight, combined with a movable boom which is used to raise and lower equipment.

(The term derrick comes from Thomas Derrick, a hangman who invented a type of gallows using a movable beam and pulley system during the Elizabethan era. During his lifetime, Derrick executed over 3,000 people, many of them with his modified gallows device, and the supporting framework for his gallows came to be known as a derrick. The term was adopted to describe cranes and other lifting devices which used a similar support mechanism).

And, FYI...Early derricks consisted of a framework which was designed to hold a large pole used for percussive drilling, which is accomplished by repeatedly beating the earth to make a hole. A modern oil derrick typically uses a drill bit which is capable of biting through the substrate, and cooled with a constant slurry of mud to prevent it from getting too hot. Typically, as the drill bit sinks in, the hole is lined to prevent a cave in. Once the drill reaches the oil, it is withdrawn so that pumps and pipes can be inserted into the hole to extract it. In an area rich in oil, an oil derrick is designed to be a permanent structure, and will continue to operate for many years.

As my beady eyes are scanning the landscape on both sides of the road, what do my wandering eyes perceive???...it's an old headstone. Unfortunately, it's on the other side of the interstate and since the exits are sometimes too far apart, I couldn't turn around to go investigate. All I say was a very old headstone surrounded by a small fence along the interstate near Exit 150 N. Maybe I'll get the chance to check it out sometime. If you know me well enough, you KNOW I want to know the story behind the grave.

I saw lots of pronghorn antelopes and lots of wild horses, as well as lots of dead jackrabbits. Something fun and unusual were silhouette cutouts that people had placed on the top of some of the mountains along the side of the road. There was a running horse with a rider, a jackalope, a cowboy on horse, a buffalo, etc. They looked very real especially when there's a sitting sun behind them.

One personal observation I made was this...because of the lack of traffic, I surmise that you could pick your nose and no one would ever know it. I can also set my cruise control for about 82 mph and never hit my brakes. Gotta love it, huh?

Some of the exits are interesting also. Any exit which is not a major one heading to a city or town has cattle guards located at the bottom of each one. I realize that some people may not think this is something worth writing about, but it shows me how open and desolate some of these areas are.

I have driven through very interestingly named towns or seen them on the map. How 'bout Muddy Gap, Bar Nunn, Ten Sleep, Wheatland (guess what they grow lots of there) and today I went through the town of Chugwater. I stopped at a rest area there and found a brochure about Chugwater and here is the story of that town...

Before any white men came into the area, a Mandan chief was disabled during a tribal buffalo hunt. His son, Ahwiprie, also known as "The Dreamer", had to take charge of the hunt. He came up with a plan of driving the buffalo over the nearby cliffs, an efficient and effective hunting technique. When the buffalo hit, they made a chug-like sound, either from the impact or the bursting of their stomachs. So, the place where the buffalo were stampeded was called "water at the place where the buffalo chug" because of the stream nearby. Pretty cool, huh? The Clydesdale horses for the Budweiser Brewing company was and is bred here also.

I also saw lots of windmills. These are the kind used to pump water from farm wells for the cattle. Some of them look like they've been there forever.

So, even though you may not have been with me on my little trip today, maybe you can enjoy some of the things I saw.
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One thing I will do if we move out here is take a map and mark it showing the places where you would be able to stop and use the bathroom. Those places are few and far between and unfortunately the sagebrush is not tall enough to hide you and there are hardly any trees to hide behind either.