Tag: Wyoming

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Dispatch from ’73, Part 2: The One-Legged Man and Other Strangers on the Train

Amtrak’s San Francisco Zephyr in Denver, April 1975. I believe the station and trainyard were blanketed by several inches of snow when my train passed through in January 1973. Photo: Drew Jacksich via Wikimedia.

Continuing the mini-saga of my first trip west in January 1973. Part 1 ended with the Amtrak’s San Francisco Zephyr just rolling out of Denver in the snow. As I transcribe this, I’m successfully suppressing every editorial impulse to jump in and correct the worst of the punctuation and other errors I see. But I am including a couple of bracketed inserts where I think my generic references to some of the people I mention are confusing.

***

Crossing into Wyoming, there was little change from the Colorado ranch-land. We started to go through low scrub hills just before Cheyenne, and the tracks on both sides were flanked by rows of snow fences.

Cheyenne: It was snowing there, too. It looked like a small town (I guess it has about 50,000 people), but all I could see was down streets ending at the tracks. A few people got on there: a young guy, a picture (to me) of the rodeo cowboy. He was thin built and small-boned, his face was freckled, and he had a redness in his cheeks. His hair was short cut and wavy light-brown above a pair of clear grey eyes.

The other (that caught my attention), was an old Wyoming railroad man1. He was about seventy-five, I’d say: he climbed on, taking off his cream-colored Stetson. I saw his face, I still see it: a red bulb for a nose, a watery glitter behind his spectacles, seemingly coming from behind his eyes. And a grin that seemed never to leave his face. His eyes were the indicator of the grin: they told me if it was mirthful, bored, or derisive, and I saw all three.

And the train moved off westward, again. I went to lunch with my friend from Green River, and the young rodeo star, and another kid (going from Denver to Ogden, I think) sat at the same table.

We talked: The rodeo man was going to Rock Springs where a friend was going to meet him and drive him to his hometown (Cokeville2) where he was picking his car up en route to Jackson. He wasn’t a rodeo star at all.

The other kid (Denver-Ogden) was out of school and was travelling around. Mostly, the four of us talked about Wyoming. It’s vastness, and loneliness. The incredible wilderness to the north,, the Tetons.

At one point: (Denver-Ogden) [said,]”I didn’t think Wyoming had any mountains,” in a puzzled sort of way.

Rodeo replied, “Heck, the whole state is a mountain.” It turned out he was out of school, too, and was just kicking around on the money he had earned on a construction job. He had a lot to say; I listened to him and was pretty fascinated.

“Well, a couple of weeks ago I saw a guy drawing down on an eagle with a .22. I had a 30-ought-six with me, so I just dropped a couple of shots next to him, and he took off.

“I’ve only shot towards a man twice in my life. The other time was, well, we have a lot of trouble with Utah fishermen. We had a lake and stream on the ranch I was working, and these guys come and fish them. It’s OK except when we have feed growing, because these guys drive their four-wheeled trucks and jeeps down there and rip everything up.

“So one time this guy came down, and I politely told him to get off, and not to fish there. Well, he left, and parked his car outside our fence, and walked back in. I came back to make sure he was gone, and he was there. So I politely told him to get off again. And he started to walk off, but as soon as I was out of sight, he walked back down.

“I came back a third time and found him. I was carrying a .22 hand-gun, so I took it out and layed about five shots into the water right front of him. He ran all the way out, saying, ‘I’ll get the sheriff on you, you god-damned fool!’

“He went into town and got the town constable and told him ‘Some crazy, god-damned idiot was shooting at me on the range.’ So the constable asked him to describe the guy. When he heard the description, he laughed and said, ‘Get out of here. That crazy fool was my son!'” And so on.

And crossing southern Wyoming, I got my first taste of the west. Crossing the country of Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith, and the riders of the Pony Express. The day was cloudy, the snow had stopped, and the Union Pacific moved slowly upward; through high and dry range hills covered with four feet of snow.

In the dome car, I heard the old railroad man talking about wrecks (we were stopped for one just out of Medicine Bow, right off of Route 30). The sky was clearing, the sun shining bright off the hills and meeting the sky on a ridge top. Antelope ran from the right of way as the train moved through: tiny, springing creatures darting on the white fields. Deer, bounding over fences, grey in their winter hide, and looking for food under the deep snow cover. Everybody pointed to an animal running the brow of a ridge a hundred yards from the train. Bobcat, fox, coyote?

The trainman said it was a fox, and smiled when anybody suggested anything else. I thought it was a coyote, and my rodeo friend agreed. “I never saw a fox run like that before.”

Towards dark we pulled through Rollins3, passing and running alongside Interstate 80. I could tell it was going to be a clear night, and it made me feel good. And we went over the Continental Divide, and started heading for the Pacific.

At dark I went to dinner; I shook hands with my friends from Rock Springs and Green River, and headed through the cars to the diner. This was my celebration dinner, and I ordered a steak, and it was pretty good.

At Denver, a one-legged guy got on who was going to Oakland. He had a tired, harassed-looking face, and was having a pretty tough time hobbling down the aisles of the train on his crutches.

I saw him in the dining car talking to a long-haired guy in his mid-twenties who was headed for San Francisco. I was finishing my dinner when he [the one-legged man] walked past me and stopped, saying, “Young man, come back to the men’s room and have a smoke,” and I nodded, feeling very confused. At the same time I nodded, I thought, “Here’s a come-on” and simultaneously, “Forget this shit.”

I paid my check and walked back, and he was sitting with the same [long-haired] guy in the dome car, and as soon as he saw me, said, “Come on.” He started off down the aisle, but I sat down where he had been and tried to talk to the other guy. “Where you going,” I asked. “San Francisco.” I told him, “Yeah, that’s where I’m going, too,” which didn’t seem to thrill him. Meanwhile, the one-legged man walked all the way to the end of the car before realizing I was not behind him, and returned.

“My name is Jack,” he said as he sat down opposite me. “How’re ya doing,” I replied. And after about two minutes, after Jack had engaged himself in conversation, I took off back to my car. He didn’t follow, but I was afraid he would, and afraid to go back to the dome car because he was there.

End of Part 2.

Notes

  1. I’m a little hazy on how I decided this gentleman was a railroad man. I’m sure he must have said something I overheard to that effect. Later, I describe him talking about train wrecks along this part of the route.
  2. Look up “Cokeville elementary school hostage crisis.”
  3. Rawlins, obviously.
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Road Blog: The Murk, Continued

Sept. 2: Highway 33, near Tetonia, Idaho, looking toward Grand Tetons from the west.
April 2018: Google Streetview image of the same stretch of Highway 33 in image above, near Tetonia, Idaho, looking toward Grand Tetons from the west.
Sept. 2: Jackson Hole from Teton Pass.
Sept. 2: Grand Teton National Park
Sept. 2: Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming,
Sept. 1: U.S. 93, north of Ely, Nevada.
August 31: Along Nevada Highway 376.

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Eclipse Day: Casper, Wyoming

Well, just under over three hours to T-Time. T for totality. The sky is clear but a little smoky here. Off to the north, a bank of high clouds is visible. Is it headed this way?

From the final, very complete forecast discussion published at 2:48 a.m. by the Riverton office of the National Weather Service:

“… Natrona county, including Casper, will lie within the other good area to view the eclipse as it will likely be mostly clear and sunny to begin the day with high clouds not making it into the County until after totality, through the afternoon. There is also one additional caveat to this astronomical event – smoke cover. The forecast area will see another frontal push through the area later this morning perhaps bringing in more wildfire smoke and causing or continuing some visibility decrease (keeping the sky a bit hazy side even without the clouds). Again, none of these factors will keep the eclipse from being viewed – but may somewhat limit how it/what can
be seen around the eclipse itself…especially near/at totality. On the other hand, the colors associated with this kind of filtering could be quite dramatic.”

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Eclipse Road Trip Day 7: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Eclipse Chaser

U.S. Post Office in Lodgepole, Nebraska.

Starting midday Saturday from Sidney, Nebraska — a town of 6,000 just off Interstate 80 in the southwestern corner of the Nebraska panhandle — we drove east on U.S. 30 through the towns of Sunol and Lodgepole (or Lodge Pole, if you believe the lettering on the Post Office building there).

Lodgepole was one of my destinations on this trip. According to letters from one of my great-great-grandfathers, Timothy Jeremiah Hogan, his parents moved their family to this part of Nebraska in the mid-1860s to work on the Union Pacific railroad. Tim suggests they lived first in Lodgepole, then Sidney, 16 miles west, so the family would have the protection from hostile Indians in the area.

We hung around Lodgepole for maybe 30 or 45 minutes. I took pictures, naturally. We cruised by the most substantial building in town, the old brick public school — every small Nebraska town seems to have one. Then we were off again in the rain — we were caught in the beginning of a pretty persistent thunderstorm — and stayed west on Route 30, then turned north on Nebraska 27 to Oshkosh, on the North Platte River.

North of Oshkosh, the state blacktop ends and you begin a 60-mile stretch that begins with well-maintained dirt roads for roughly the first (southern) half of the drive and continues on a single lane of choppy asphalt for the second (northern) half.

The reason you take that road, which goes through the Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge, is that it’s crossing one of the more remote parts of Nebraska’s Sand Hills.

The Sand Hills are a sweeping expanse of grass-covered dunes — about 20,000 square miles — said to have formed after the last ice age. And driving through on a road that twists and turns and somehow always seems to be climbing, it’s apparent you’re traveling through sand dunes being held in place by grasses and wildflowers (chief among the latter: black-eyed susans).

Anyway. I thought the Sand Hills would be the ideal place to watch the eclipse, and yesterday’s drive was to scout out the road. We saw a dozen, maybe 15 other cars, almost all with out-of-state plates, apparently doing the same. Passing ranches along the road, I had the same feeling of eclipse envy I experienced elsewhere on our trip — “Gee, these people live right here where the show is happening. Aren’t they lucky. I wish I could stay here.”

Near Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge in the Nebraska Sand Hills.

We got off that Crescent Lake road a little before 6 p.m. — another product of our late start — and headed east on Nebraska Highway 2, which runs for about 125 miles or so right through the heart of the Sand Hills. Our destination was Valentine, on U.S. 20 right up at the top of the state, and adding in that we crossed into Central time and lost and hour, we didn’t get off the road until 10 (it was all beautiful, though — even the lightning show to our east at dusk.

We checked into our hostelry, which I’ll call the Sketchy Rest, walked the dog, and then began checking on the latest Monday morning forecasts for the Sand Hills.

I want to say here that I am an inveterate, if not a sophisticated, reader of weather forecasts of all kinds. As I pored over forecast discussions and graphical forecasts and meteorological whatnot, the consensus from those who study computer models to understand upcoming weather was that it was likely to be cloudy in the Sand Hills on Monday morning. Part of me simply doesn’t want to believe that and found it hard to picture after experiencing one beautifully sunny follow another all the way through our trip. That included Saturday, when the Sand Hills were framed by distant, rising thunderheads but were spectacularly clear along our road.

The forecasts hadn’t improved by this morning (Sunday), so we went looking for options.

The forecast for Casper, Wyoming, was for clear, clear, clear skies. Plus, it’s close to the center of the eclipse path. What if we could find a place there?

I checked motels. There were a few room on offer online — $2,000 for a single night. No.

Kate, whom I believe is both charming and lucky (she wound up with me, after all), started to call motels. She found some friendly innkeepers, but no room.

I checked Craigslist. There was a single listing for a sort of in-law unit near the south end of Casper. No price listed. I got in touch with the person who posted the place. We talked. A price was agreed on (he happened to name the figure that Kate and I had previously agreed would be our maximum; more than I’d pay in any other circumstances, I think, but not a killer — and not anything like $2,000).

So we hit the road to Casper from Valentine — 325 miles on top of the 2,000 from the previous six days — rolling west on U.S. 20 about 1 p.m. It was a fast trip, with the usual dog- and picture-related stops, and we pulled in here just after (we gained an hour traveling back into Mountain time).

The sky when we got here? Starting to cloud up. Thunder was rolling. The light and storm clouds were beautiful. The stars are out tonight, though, and the forecast is still for sunny (and smoky) skies in the morning. Except for this one note from the regional forecast office, which noted the likelihood of some smoke in the air:

“One other feature to watch is (a) thinning band of higher clouds that is forecast by some of the guidance to be between the Wind River Basin and Casper around totality time. It may be clearing the Wind River Basin/Riverton vicinity in time and then possibly affect the Casper area between 11 and noon. May be a rather narrow band then but there could be some concern for viewing in this narrow cloud feature.”

Kate just reminded me that the moon will start crossing the sun’s disk here at 10:22 a.m MDT. Totality will occur at 11:43 a.m. I wonder where that cloud will be.

Sky above Casper, Wyoming, Aug. 20, 2017.