The Wyoming Journals, Ch. 2: Roughing It, Wyoming Style

Ch. 2:   Roughing It, Wyoming Style

The Alaskan hunting camps to which I accompanied my husband had four things in common:   tents, bonfires, sleeping bags, and mosquitoes.

The reason for the tents is obvious—protection from the weather and to keep the magpies from running off with your small equipment.

The bonfires (campfires) were multi-purpose—warmth, cooking, drying clothing, and perhaps keeping curious bears at bay.

The sleeping bags and mosquitoes, again obvious.   One necessary and the other a nuisance.

Of the three different camps, one was accessed by small float plane, one by riding horses (or leading, depending on how much your knees hurt) fifteen miles into the mountains, and the third by wrestling a four-wheel ATVs thirteen miles along dirt trails, over boulders, and through water deep enough to make you ride with your feet on the handlebars.

They do things differently in Wyoming.   Moose hunting in Alaska is done usually from Sept 1 to Sept. 15, depending on the whims of the game board.   In Wyoming, elk season opens in October and runs through whenever, again depending on the whims of those who run those things.

Mule deer just outside of camp.

After I’d been in my cousins’ elk camp a few days, I said, “So, what you need to hunt elk in Wyoming are a couple $200,000 RVs, a couple antique trucks, and MREs?” *

The response was laughter, but nobody denied my observation.   The only things in common with Alaskan hunts were the sleeping bags, even though we were bedded down in those luxurious movable land yachts.

Still autumn at this elevation.

When my cousin Christine picked me up in Denver and drove us to the Snowy Mountain range in southeastern Wyoming, the first order of business was to set up the portable, hand-made outhouse.    A hole was dug, the floor set, the walls screwed together and the top set in place.   The throne was installed and straps were fastened to guy brackets screwed into the ground were to thwart the Wyoming winds.

Chris and her dad Bud assemblingt he sections and appurtenances.

Bob with the roof.  Note the red straps holding down the outhouse.

Installing the door.

Bud, Chris, and Bob celebrating its completion.

Chris and the outhouse.   That lamp heats it.

Then came the unbelievable:   a propane lamp not only provided illumination but also heat, so much heat that I began called the structure the sauna.  An automatic air freshener periodically dispensed a pleasant masking aroma to cover natural unpleasant aromas.   TP was placed on a stainless-steel shelf, and a magazine rack attached to the inside of the door.   There was no Sears catalogue, however.

Good for drying boots, too.

With the obligatory crescent moon sandblasted into the door’s window, the interior light shining through was a beacon to the outhouse at night.

Two tents were erected:   one, the garage, for storing propane bottles and gasoline containers for vehicles and the ATVs, and another, peculiarly called the cook tent, was for drying clothing, and changing into and out of the warm camouflage gear and boots.    I'm not sure why it's called the cook tent.   No cooking was done in it, but there was a grill set up outside.



 

Bud's handmade frame for the tent.

It's easier to assemble if you  lay it  out in the right orientation....

The cook tent in the foreground and the garage in the rear.

Nice and warm and perfect for drying boots and clothing.

A truck with a hundred-gallon propane bottle in back supplied gas to the two RVs for heat, cooking, and hot water.  The camp was completed with an artificial grass lawn “planted” between the two RVs and held in place with big rocks.

A camp near us.

All set up.

Brad's 5th wheel trailer is at left.   After this photo was taken, the guys fastened a yard light to the top of the ladder.   A YARD LIGHT, no less.   Bud's Class A motorhome is at right and to the right of that is his '81 Ford Bronco, the hunting vehicle.  It is one of the two antique vehicles necessary to hunt elk in Wyoming.

Brad, left, and his son Charles in front of the second antique hunting vehicle.  

Note the yard light on the top of the 5th wheel trailer ladder.

Brad's son Charles and Cousin Bud sitting around the non-existent campfire.

 Now, if you think I'm having a bit of fun writing about this magnificent hunting camp, well, I am.   But if you think about it, most of us are in our 70s and comfort is appreciated.    Sleeping on the cold ground inside a tent that drops frozen condensation crystals on your sleeping bag (which then melt and dampen your bag) is not fun.












 
 

Bud's motorhome was the real cook shack.   Here, Brad prepares salads for dinner.

Bud helps by staying out of the way.   And quiet.   No snoring.

Also, consider the mechanical talent and care it takes to keep those antique vehicles running.   Consider the ingenuity put into all the handmade equipment like the tent frameworks and the outhouse.   Brad and Bud have been hunting together for decades and they have perfected this camping thing.

Not so much with the MREs, though.


There were no mosquitoes or campfires.

This is roughing it in style at 8300 feet elevation.

*MREs is the acronym for Meals Ready to Eat, and are packaged military rations with water-activated hydrogen heating packets.   Ours expired in the Pleistocene epoch.

The equipment trailer.

This is Bob in the equipment trailer, trying to get to spools of wire rope (cable) that are UNDER the two 50 gallon blue potable water barrels.

The Wyoming Journals, Ch. One: Twenty-five Thousand Miles and $11.20

Twenty-five Thousand Miles and $11.20

It was the sweet and sour chicken that started it all.   It was not, as has been alleged, the oatmeal raisin cookies.

It was the chicken.   That,  and being raised in Alaska since age six and thus not knowing many of my relatives.  

It's like the advice "never go shopping when you're hungry."   I was hungry and browsing Facebook, when  I saw the food being prepared for my cousin Bud's upcoming elk hunt.

Those large pans of sweet and sour chicken and beef stew prompted me to use 25,000 Alaska Airlines miles and $11.20 for a ticket that would get me to Denver and ultimately to the Snowy Mountain range in southeastern Wyoming.  

Bud's wife Barb preparing the ever-favorite sweet and sour chicken.

Barb's beef stew.

Along with those entrees were photos of large batches of chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies, but, really now, how tempting could cookies be?

Our move from Detroit to Anchorage, Alaska, was in 1948, a time when travel of that distance was a rarity for working class families.  

To this day, there are a whole bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins I’ve never met and I can’t even tell you who they are or how many there are or how they are related to me.

I remember Bud though.  He mentions those relatives now and them.   I give him a blank look in return.   Bud’s parents came to Alaska to visit a few times, so I got to know them, but Bud had a business and kids in Wyoming, and didn’t make the trip to Alaska until 2000 and we began to get reacquainted.   I also met his brother Bob for the first time along with one of his sons, and then Bud’s daughter Chris.

During those visits, Bud would often mention elk hunting, and would invite me down for a visit.

Then, in late September of this year, the sweet and sour chicken showed up on my Facebook feed.   What the heck, I thought.   I wasn’t doing anything and it looked like the rain was never going to stop.  Why not?

Chris made comfort food--tuna casserole with crushed potato chips on top.

“Why not” was soon a definite itinerary as was an appointment with a doctor to obtain a prescription for meds to prevent high altitude sickness.   According to Bud, the temps could be from the teens to 70 degrees, and from 5000-foot altitude to over 9000 feet, so I mailed off a box of cold weather boots and clothes.

He somehow neglected to mention wind, but then, he’s lived in Wyoming for 42 years and apparently one is so inured to wind after that long, that one considers it a given and doesn't realize that other people don't live in wind tunnels.

And that is how I found myself sitting in a hunting blind on the side of a mountain, freezing my tush and toesies off in a freaking blizzard.

The aforementioned cookies had nothing to do with it.

Wouldn't Miss It for the World, Sweetie

I was lazing around in front of the TV one evening, playing Candy Crush on my iPad and listening to reruns of Law and Order, only occasionally glancing at the screen, when my peripheral vision caught movement out the big front window.   Three swans were flying just above the tree tops, headed east, which is their usual pathway to migrate south.

I was pretty sure they were the resident swans of Tern Lake and their cygnet.  Something told me they were going to Trail Lake, down in Moose Pass proper, rather than migrating south as many of their kindred swans have done.   That also told me that the cold temperatures of late were freezing their home lake and leaving little space for the swans.

Sure enough, Tern Lake sported ice skaters the next couple days.  At Dave's Creek, the lake's outfall, I still couldn't find any American dippers downstream.

What I did find were lots and lots of brown bear tracks in the snow along the path and everywhere else.  And lots and lots of mangled silver salmon carcasses that had been pulled from the creek and partially devoured.

Then came the thaw, a couple days of warm winds and rain.   When the nastiest of the weather was over, I ventured down to the lake.   The swans were back, as I knew they would be.  With little open water, they were feeding right alongside the highway and I stopped to visit.

 

Then, it was time to check Dave's Creek to look for dippers.   I was ruing what a long, long winter it would be if the dippers were gone for the winter, and trying to tamp down a dread that the merlin that had been stalking the dippers might have been successful.

Now that the snow was gone, I couldn't tell if the bear was still active at the creek.   I had bear spray with me and I was on high alert.   The best thing to do would be to make a lot of noise as I walked the short path, but I was hoping to sneak up on the mergansers that like to hang out at a bend in the creek, and that was definitely counter-productive to keeping bears at bay.

Today, I caught the mergansers right at the outfall of the lake and, sure enough, the silly shy things took flight when they saw me, only to land at the ice edge about fifty feet away.

 Then, I started downstream.    There were a lot more fish carcasses around, only partially eaten.   I was amazed that the bald eagles haven't been flocking here, as they did last winter.

There are still a lot of salmon in the creek and sometimes they get caught in shallows.

And then, I found the dipper right on the near shore at the bend in the creek. 

 

It flew over to a favorite perch and serenaded me for several minutes.   It frequently winked its white-feathered eyelid during its aria. 

Then looked at me and said, "Watch what I can do!"

The dipper hopped over to a spot where a fallen log created a small waterfall, and, using the strong feet that enable these birds to walk under water, climbed up the waterfall to a still pool.

Then began a search. turning over rocks, moving leaves and other debris in its way, until it came up with a salmon egg.

It soon found, and swallowed, three more.   With each one,  it briefly showed off its find, as if asking me if I'd like one.


"No, thanks, I have some chick...   Uh, pasta waiting for me at home.

Then, full of its salmon dinner, the dipper hopped to a branch and settled in for a nap, giving me one last look with sleepy eyes.

"Later,"  I said.

Turning onto the highway, I stropped once again to see the swans.  The cygnet came over to visit.

"Look how much I've grown," it said, spreading its great wings.

 "And I can fly!!!"

"I know, Sweetie.   I saw you fly past my home with your Mum and Dad.   You were doing so well."

I said goodbye, and the cygnet said, "Are you coming back tomorrow?"

 "I wouldn't miss it for the world, Sweetie.   Not for the whole wide world."