Cheyenne (or; Why Blow Dryers are Redundant in Wyoming)

Good morning from Sheridan Wyoming!!! I am prefacing this post with a warning: the text is 1 to 2 days old and the pictures will all show Cheyenne and highway N25 heading to Montana. Wifi is back on the "catch as catch can" mode and if it were me reading this thing I would want less talk and more pictures. So I am fulfilling my own selfish desires and hopefully giving you some cheap entertainment at the same time. This stupid internet is really slow so I will post a ton of pictures at the next stop (with no words from me!)

Stardate 07132010:

Chicago got nuthin over Wyoming. Man, the wind is whipping around at about 40 mph just trying to shove me all over the road. I’ve been told (from several trustworthy sources, i.e. people who live here year round) that the wind can get up to 100 mph out here in the winter. Apparently yesterday was a good day. I was told it was relatively calm. Um, yeah.
So far I’ve seen some antelope out in the front yard of a house, there’s an owl that hoots outside the camper window every morning, and I saw D ave’s cool looking poodle chickens in the pen. ( you have to look at the pics, there is no way I can describe them.)
I met a state trooper at the Capitol building yesterday who told me people move here in cycles. They visit in June, spend a year looking at houses, come back the following June to “move in” and a year later the house is up for sale because winter kicked their wimpy little asses. There are 2 seasons here; summer and wind.
All that aside it really is beautiful here. There is a huge wind farm down the road sitting on a plateau and a range of mountains farther off on the horizon. The town of Cheyenne itself is steeped in history and probably one of the best and friendliest tourist towns I’ve ever been in. Of course everyone is gearing up for “Frontier Days” which is a big money maker for the local inhabitants. There is also an Air Force base near here so lots of military personnel spending their pay in the town. One young girl I talked with while roaming around told me the populations swells by three times as many people during Frontier Days and that’s not counting the people who live here but leave town because they hate the rubber-neckers.
I learned that Wyoming was the first state in the union to “allow” women to vote ( note the sarcasm but I have never gotten over the word “allow” and “women” being in the same sentence in that context. Hello!! We do all the hard stuff in life!!). The architecture here is amazing; you can certainly see that things were built to withstand the windy conditions and are still functional today. The wood in the Capitol building is all cherry; the spindles on the stair case were all made by Amish folks. Every single one is absolutely beautiful. There must be over 1000 spindles altogether due to the three floors. The second to the last spindle on the left side handrail as you are ascending from the first floor to the second floor has a spindle that was specifically put in upside down. This is because the Amish apparently put a flaw into all of their work believing that it keeps them humble. They apparently believe(ed?) that only God can achieve perfection and therefore to retain their humility the Amish craftsmen purposely refuse to try for perfection. How bored was the state trooper that he had time to tell me all of this? Nice guy though.
There is still a huge train yard as you come into town, although I didn’t see any stock yards, and you can sit at the Depot and watch the “shift” change. “Shift” has a different connotation for the Union Pacific workers. These guys were getting on and off the train with full duffels and a cooler or two. I was told that they have to bring extra clothes and their own supplies with them. The clothes are in case of a breakdown on the track somewhere. The trains run through some pretty rugged territory; given the propensity of bears to eat people and the fact that they still roam around in the wild I hope the employees are allowed to carry guns. Or at least some A-1 to make themselves tastier to the bears. Better to be eaten quickly than mauled and left on the plate like a left-over lunch from a two year old.
I spent the entire day by myself just riding the bike and looking around. It was nice. Bob hung out with Dave and did guy stuff; apparently mostly driving around town drooling over old cars they can’t afford to buy or don’t have the space to rehab.
Today we leave for Montana to visit David’s family. I’m looking forward to it.

On a totally unrelated topic: do not hang those moisture wick bags in a closet to keep the mildew down and then leave them there. When they decompose they turn to oil. I almost had a heart attack when I opened the closet on the Dawg Haus yesterday and saw a huge puddle of oil on my Dutch oven that I keep in there. I am such a dumbass!

Update July 14, 2010

We drove about 7 hours yesterday to get to Sheridan. Our final destination was supposed to be Hardin, Mt. but Bob was so tired that an hour and a half out we just grabbed the nearest KOA and pulled in. We are currently enjoying a cuppa Joe and listening to wind blow (apparently the most common form of entertainment in Wyoming, second only to rodeos) and trying to post pictures on the blog. Bob and I have to share the internet and since I have been using it all morning I decided to be a good wife and let him play around a little while and I would update the text for the blog while waiting.

Bob and I are having some long conversations about moving here. There are a lot of pros and cons to the idea. Looking around on the drive here I can see that life here is hard; it is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Neighbors would be few and far between (bonus!) but so are hospitals and other assorted services. (not so bonus.) I talked with a lady in Cheyenne about interpreting possibilities should we decide to move here; she was so excited to hear I was an interpreter. “The public schools need them so bad!!” She was so nice I didn’t have the heart to tell her I would rather suck shit through a straw than interpret a mainstream classroom, but the more I thought about it the more I thought I might be able to do some consulting; workshops, evals and such. I’m not looking to make a lot of money, I just need enough to pay for the basic necessities of life. But if I don’t actually work in a classroom at least I can try to get the interpreters to understand the kids they work with and a bit more about the language. I guess I sound pretty freaking egotistical right now, don’t I? Ha ha. For all I know their system here is the best in the US. (although I doubt it, they don’t seem to have an open Deaf school which puts it low on the scale of “getting it” for me.)

Weather is another issue. David says the snow here is more powder than the wet crap we get in Indiana; understandable since the air out here is so dry; but the winters are long and the wind will cut like a knife. It can get down to 10-15 below zero on average and that thought is enough to make me shiver at high noon in July. If I can have a greenhouse that would make life MUCH better for me here. The growing season here is so short (Dave has peas growing in his garden and it’s the middle of July), I would need grow lights and a floor that can tolerate plenty of water. I am also trying to figure out if there is anything I can do to earn money that has no relationship to interpreting.

On the drive up here I noticed this blue-green shrub growing, almost the color of spruce trees, and it finally hit me that this is the sage that I’m always reading about. I grabbed some leaves at one of our stops and sure enough it is also the source of that wonderful spicy smell in the air that I have been inhaling for the last four days. It really is wonderful to step outside and smell this clean spicy smell all the time. No wonder the Indians used it so much. I’m gonna have to find a spot in the road I can cut a bunch of it to dry and take home.