If South Dakota is the little sister who is screaming for attention, waving obnoxious billboards asking you to come visit and fall in love with her, Wyoming is the brother who tolerates your arrival and doesn't give a damn if you like him or not. These proud people are nice, don't get me wrong. As long as you're not some liberal Californian moving into Jackson Hole and trying to change the face of their state, you just might be ok. This nearly 100,000 square foot state is so scarcely populated that only one area code covers all its inhabitants. In an area that sparse, you'd better believe these people know a thing or two about survival. Vore Buffalo JumpOur first stop in Wyoming was an introduction to survival the Native American way. Long before horses became part of their tradition, Plains Indian tribes used to come together on foot every fall to stage a buffalo jump, rounding up hundreds of buffalo, scaring them into a stampede, and directing them off a cliff or, in this case, into an 85 feet deep sink hole. The Vore Buffalo Jump, for many years, was a typically avoided sinkhole on Vore ranch land. It wasn't until the 1970's, as engineers were planning the route of I-90 that a soil sample discovered bones--lots and lots of bones! The sinkhole was turned over to archeologists who determined that over a span of 250 years, the site was used for at least 22 hunts. Only 10% excavated at this time, archeologists have found over 500 bison skeletons, all very well preserved. Stone tools, including arrowheads, axes (used to break the skull to remove brains or leg bones to remove the marrow), and cutting tools have all been found on the site. Visitors can learn all about the native tradition--and art-- of buffalo jumps, the importance of these jumps for survival through harsh winters, and the many ways the buffalo was used. My mind blowing moment: learning that buffalo tongues were used, not only for meat, but as hair brushes! Dung was used as diaper powder, and the kids thought that using buffalo bladders for water bottles and "the original ziplock" was pretty spectacular! We highly recommend this stop, right off I-90, with excellent personalized tour guides to take you through the site. Devil's Tower
Back at the campground, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for an outdoor movie showing of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you've never seen it (which we hadn't), Devil's Tower plays a major part in the movie as a secret meeting place between our government and aliens, and was filmed in the 1970's right where our campsite was. The KOA plays the movie every single night. Dubois: Worth the trip, but we didn't see anythingLeaving Devil's Tower the next morning, it was evident that our attempt to infect all four of us at once failed and our bout with COVID wasn't quite over. Banana's fever spiked on the drive west. We decided to forego our Harvest Host boondocking night at a llama farm and keep driving west to our next full-hookup campground. No sooner did we pull in to Windhaven RV Resort in Dubois than a bunch of campers/locals drinking beers at a picnic table outside the office started razzing Dusty about his truck. (I told you...they'll tolerate you, but they aren't trying to be your best friend.) Dusty jumped in like they'd been buddies for years and won them over with a volley that went something like this:
Cowboy: "You drive that thing long enough and it'll turn into a GMC." Dusty: "Well, I needed something that was going to get me across the country, so I wasn't going to buy a GMC." Cowboy: "A GMC is much sexier. You should have bought a GMC." Dusty: "Why do I need a sexy truck when I got all this?" (Motions his hands up and down his body like Vanna White revealing the missing letters.) I'm going to let you sit with that vision for a bit. If you're rolling in your chair laughing, you're almost where I was at that moment. Oh. My. Goodness! He passed the test, was declared "ok" in their book, and the wife of the cowboy even said they needed to hang out. Dustin Ramsey. Way cooler than me. So. freaking. Funny. God, I hope I never forget that moment. The little western town of Dubois, Wyoming, just an hour and a half east of Jackson Hole is worth a visit in its own right. Little shops like The Honey House and museums like the National Big Horn Sheep Center and hikes with gorgeous lake and glacier views, as well as their own version of the badlands, could make for a vacation in itself. However, we stopped here for two nights to recuperate since both of the kids were sick by this point. Dubois will definitely be a town added to our "come back later" list. I'm almost certain that, secretly, they want us there, they just don't say it outloud.
1 Comment
8/24/2022 09:28:54 pm
Making memories never to forget. Dusty. Except for sick kids. Not a fun moment for sure.
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