Never a Wrong Turn (Ever): Thermopolis, Wyoming

How would a town get a name like that? You guessed it, hot springs, all around town. We left the Tetons and drove over the Togwatee Pass at 9544 feet. We again crossed the continental divide. And again, we went through a lot of road construction. Obama's stimulus package has the road crews back to work and we are getting better roads, but I must confess that I am selfishly getting tired of torn up roads.

Then we drove through the Wind River Reservation which is home to both Shoshone and Arapahoe tribe members. I have since learned that the tribes were arche enemies, but our government, at a time of wisdomless policy, decided that they could live together. They do now, and have cooperative governments, but it took many years of conflict to acheive this cooperativness (Is that a word? As author, I am exercising my perogative to ignore grammer and spelling and confess that I can't spell!) The Reservation is largely acres and acres of sage brush and rocks, but does have some healthy appearing farming along the Wind River. I was surprised to see some very nice houses, because I understand that mortgage institutions will not finance homes on reservations because the houses cannot be repossessed.

Tetons

Eternal road construction!

High alpine meadow

Reservation lands.

Reservation farm land.

After the reservation, we drove through the Wind River Canyon. While it is only about 10 miles long, it is very scenic. It is full of the reddest rocks and steep cliffs forming the the canyon. The canyon opens up to the town of Thermopolis.

We arrived at Thermopolis during a storm. The first campground that we wanted was full, so we camped at a campground outside of town without realizing how lucky we were. The first campground was a parking lot with a few small trees, but near the town hot springs. We discovered later, that the springs were all piped inside to pools. The land around Thermopolis had been purchased from the Wind River Reservation with a covenant that required the State to keep the pools available for the public to enjoy free of charge. So, in town are two large pools, one with a large slide, which charge around $10 to use them. In the middle is a very small building that is the State run facility open for free. However, our campground had its own springs and pools that we liked better than the ones in town. There were three pools were of varying tempuratures, and only two were really comfortable to use. Every night the owner would play his guitar and sing country western songs for about 45 minutes at the pool while everyone lounged around in the water. It was fantastic. (When in Wyoming, all music is country western!)

water source

View from the campground

The campground was so great that we stayed for three nights. We camped next to Rick and Louise from Florida who are in their mid-80s. They have been traveling by truck and fifth-wheel through Wyoming during the summer for six years. ( His truck bed has large crushed dents where the fifth wheel colapsed on the bed during hitching or unhitching. I am glad that I wasn't around when it happened because he does have quite the mouth.) He is a teaser and gave Mike a run for his money in who could tease the other the most. He has a lot of advice for our future travels and things to see. Especially for when we visit Cody which we will do next. One night in the pool, there was an elderly man being helped around by younger family members. Mike asked him if he had Parkinson's disease because his hands were shaking badly. He said "no", that his hands shook from frost bite damage. He then went on to tell us about his time as a gunner over Germany in World War II. He described going over an anti-aircraft gun that hit his plane and damaged the rudder so that it was hard to steer. This caused the plane to go over the same gun again, and it was hit again. The man said that it was so cold that his hands had frozen to the gun, and one of his comrades had to rip his hands off the gun before he could bail out of the crashing plane. He then said, "don't ask me what happened, because I can't remember the next seven months and have no idea what happened." He did tell us that he was mostly blind and deaf in one ear as a result of this escapade, but he does not know what caused these injuries. His wife died about a year ago and he lives alone, but has a nurse stop by every day, someone to clean for him and his meals delivered. It always impresses me what we learn when Mike takes the initiative to ask questions of strangers. I still have more trouble talking to stangers, but I am trying to do better.

We went to the Hot Springs County Fair which consisted of three buildings. One held the homemaking/craft exhibits, one was an exhibition for riding and showing competitions and the other held animals. Although we attended on Saturday, we missed the one day carnival and all of the horse competitions. We sat through a handling competition, where the contestants moved from horses to bulls, to sheep, pigs and goats. It was very interesting to watch. We also watched a mom with four kids leave an infant lying on a blanket in the dirt where several people almost stepped on it, and allowed a two year old appearing boy to climb to the top of the bleachers where we saw him almost fall twice before we couldn't take it and moved.