The Wyoming Journals, Ch. 11: Breathing the Rarified Air of Wyoming

Before leaving for Wyoming, I visited a doctor and obtained a prescription for drugs to prevent high altitude sickness.  I followed the instructions and started taking them the day before I left Anchorage for the Mile-High city of Denver and then to Wyoming, and continued taking them for several days.  Then I tapered off with a half pill twice a day for one day before quitting altogether.

Theoretically, I was then acclimated to the elevation.   When that last half pill wore off, I did notice a great difference:  Coke and Diet Coke returned to their familiar flavors and I was no longer in a drugged stupor that demanded several naps a day in addition to a full night’s sleep.  In fact, I felt pretty darned good and only occasionally had to stop to catch my breath in this oxygen-stingey air.

We are “camped” downhill from a sandstone formation called White Rock and the walk to it is about a quarter mile along a dirt road with maybe a ten-foot elevation gain before it descends again.  I intentionally spelled out “ten-foot” lest you think I accidentally omitted a few zeros.   Even though I felt good, I had to pause a couple times on the uphill leg and take deep breaths every time I made the journey.  

I really have no idea what the elevation gain is along that road, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t a hundred feet or so.   Nonetheless, gasping for air is gasping for air, and that should be worrisome.  

Up, up, and away.   Climbing higher into the Snowy Range.

Today, after visiting Sand Lake and sharing our lunches with gray jays, Bud takes us even higher in the Medicine Bow National Forest.   We reach Snowy Range Pass, with an elevation of 10, 847 feet.   I still feel good.

Medicine Bow mountain, 12. 031 ft.

Viewing platform,.built from native rock.

Might not be the top of the world, but it sure looks like it from here.

 

Bud and Chris.

Down the road a ways, we find Lake Marie, one of the prettiest mountain lakes I have ever seen, and I've seen quite a few.

I am immediately drawn to a small rock building next to the parking area.

From the back of the cabin,  I can see the lake, so I head there next.

This explanation of why the lake is called Lake Marie left me gobsmacked.   To understand why, you have to remember how things were for women in that era.

"Lake Marie was named for Mrs.Mary (Marie) Bellamy [1861 to 1955] by her husband, Charles Bellamy, who was a government surveyor.  After Marie was elected to the Wyoming Legislature, she led the successful suffrage drive that resulted in the passage of the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution.

Mary G> Bellamy was born December 13, 1861.   After moving to Laramie in 1873 she became one of the three members of the first graduating class of Laramie High School.   Starting her teaching career in 1868 in Tybo, Nevada, she returned to Laramie in 1882.  Mary married Charles Bellamy in 1886.   After successfully being elected to the office of Albany County Superintendent of Schools in 1902, she became the first woman to be elected to the Wyoming Legislature in 1910."

When we return to the parking lot, I see this sign.

And then we headed home through the mid-autumn foliage....

....and found the perfect aspen in golden dress.

The Wyoming Journals, Ch. 10: Team Cousins Go Sight Seeiing

Team Cousins, by dint of having filled its only elk harvest permit (held by Bud), is in grave danger of becoming a quartet of slackards and lay-abouts. 

This is expiated to some degree each morning when the BOING! BOING! BOING! sounds of reveille spew forth from Chris’s phone at 4 o’clock (reminding me of the wretched scene of the little girl in The Exorcist), and the cousins spring from their sleeping bags and pretend  get interested in the morning preparations.

Dressed, brushed, and combed, Chris sets out the sandwich assembly line, while Bud whips up breakfast in the form of pancakes, or ham and eggs, or French toast.   Bob….   Well, I forget what Bob does during these moments, even though I am the official observer and chronicler of events, a duty I take quite seriously and fulfill from the command post of Bud’s Laz-y-boy recliner.   Well,  a motorhome version of a Laz-y-Boy.

Brad and Charles trek across the 12-foot wide “lawn” between the two RVs and join Team Cousins for breakfast.   Once we see them safely on their way out the door for their morning hunt, Chris’s sandwiches tucked into their packs, we crawl back into our sleeping bags for our early morning nap.

I specify “early morning nap ”to differentiate between late morning, early afternoon, and pre-dinner naps.

On this particular day, however, Team Cousins is on the move.  Right after that early morning nap I mentioned.

Chris was a little impatient to get started.

The temperature is above freezing, the sky is clear, and the winds have died to gale force as we set out into the Snowy Mountains to go sight-seeing. 

We drive up a really decent dirt road into the mountains to a place called Sand Lake (elev. 10,124 ft), where there had once been a popular resort with rental cabins.  

After many years of operation, the owners closed it for a couple years.  When they decided to reopen the lodge, they were told they would have to update all the log cabins with sprinkler systems, and that was the end of that.

The lodge was torn down, some of the cabins hauled away.   Only a few cabins remain, most with caved-in roofs.

Found a bunch of fish in a pool below the dam.

We decided to find a snow-free table in a nearby campground and eat lunch in the warm sun.  We were the only ones there.   

Then the gray jays showed up.

Gray jays, also called Canada jays, whiskey jacks, camp robbers, and some other names that aren’t used in polite society, are endemic to picnic tables everywhere.   Plant a picnic table and you’ll soon be raising gray corvids.

This is what Wikipedia says about camp robbers:   The colloquial name camp robber is used for several species of birds (all corvids) known for their fearlessness around humans and their proclivity for stealing food from campers and picnickers:^[

I’m learning to use the camera on my new-fangled contraption called a smart phone.   There are far too many options available for a beginner like me, however that multitude of options does explain the umpteen still and video shots of gray jays taking peanuts from my hand, accidental videos rather than still shots of a plate of food, and 42 photos of my left knee.

Note the jay's foot on my hand.

I’m also learning how valuable the phone camera can be in stealth photography.   Walk into a room with a camera, and people start turning their backs or giving you the stink eye as they wonder what the heck you intend to do with that camera?'

We were entertained for more than a half hour with their antics.

Then, because I wasn’t already flirting with not-being-able-to-breathe danger at almost 10,000 feet of elevation, we headed for Snowy Range pass (almost 11,000 ft) and views of 12,013 Medicine Bow mountain, dodging moose along the way.

(to be continued)