Day 7: Jackson Hole, WY to Routt National Forest, CO. Trip Total 2,499 miles.
First thing Katie does when she wakes up, is want to go to the pool. The first thing my brother does, is moisturize. I can’t feel what little sunburn I had anymore. It’s not warm, but the pool at the Motel is heated, so we go down there, and my brother gets in and helps her swim while I go hunting for coffee.
Today is another big driving day – over 400 miles – the plan is to head down into Colorado, and camp somewhere near Steamboat Springs. Then the next day we’ll spend the morning in Steamboat before heading on further south.
The drive south through Wyoming is uneventful; we get down to I-80 by lunchtime, and stop at another Subway for lunch. While standing in line, my brother notices two rather large white patches on his t-shirt – it’s moisturizer. He’s basically got two giant forearm prints across his t-shirt from where he folded his arms - he moisturized again before he got out of the car. I’m beginning to get concerned - can you overdose on the stuff?
After lunch, we continue south, and get into Steamboat around 5:00pm, and start looking for a campsite. We drive all the way through the town – no luck. The map we have shows a road at the north end of the town that leads to a couple of campsites, so we double back to try and find it – no luck. So we head south through town again, and stop at the Visitor Information Center. It’s shut, but there is a free guidebook. It lists campsites. We try calling the first one – the lines been disconnected. Looking at the map again, it looks like there are a couple of camp sites about 20 miles south if we keep on this road, so we decide to head south and get to one of those. By the time we find the first one, it’s almost 7:00pm. And the campsite is closed. We drive on, and get to the Rabbit Ears Pass. Looking at our map (I should probably mention the map is over 10 years old and has one page per state, so is somewhat lacking in detail). This means we’ve missed the second campsite, and there is nothing else for another hour or more, so we have to double back. Eventually we spot the missed campsite – we see some RV’s set about a mile back from the road, and a trail (marked for snowmobiles) heading back to it. This campsite has about 20 places, spread over a very large area – we find one of the few remaining empty ones, and pitch the tent, among the worst mosquito’s we’ve endured all trip. This is also the highest camp site, at about 9,500 ft.
First thing Katie does when she wakes up, is want to go to the pool. The first thing my brother does, is moisturize. I can’t feel what little sunburn I had anymore. It’s not warm, but the pool at the Motel is heated, so we go down there, and my brother gets in and helps her swim while I go hunting for coffee.
Today is another big driving day – over 400 miles – the plan is to head down into Colorado, and camp somewhere near Steamboat Springs. Then the next day we’ll spend the morning in Steamboat before heading on further south.
The drive south through Wyoming is uneventful; we get down to I-80 by lunchtime, and stop at another Subway for lunch. While standing in line, my brother notices two rather large white patches on his t-shirt – it’s moisturizer. He’s basically got two giant forearm prints across his t-shirt from where he folded his arms - he moisturized again before he got out of the car. I’m beginning to get concerned - can you overdose on the stuff?
After lunch, we continue south, and get into Steamboat around 5:00pm, and start looking for a campsite. We drive all the way through the town – no luck. The map we have shows a road at the north end of the town that leads to a couple of campsites, so we double back to try and find it – no luck. So we head south through town again, and stop at the Visitor Information Center. It’s shut, but there is a free guidebook. It lists campsites. We try calling the first one – the lines been disconnected. Looking at the map again, it looks like there are a couple of camp sites about 20 miles south if we keep on this road, so we decide to head south and get to one of those. By the time we find the first one, it’s almost 7:00pm. And the campsite is closed. We drive on, and get to the Rabbit Ears Pass. Looking at our map (I should probably mention the map is over 10 years old and has one page per state, so is somewhat lacking in detail). This means we’ve missed the second campsite, and there is nothing else for another hour or more, so we have to double back. Eventually we spot the missed campsite – we see some RV’s set about a mile back from the road, and a trail (marked for snowmobiles) heading back to it. This campsite has about 20 places, spread over a very large area – we find one of the few remaining empty ones, and pitch the tent, among the worst mosquito’s we’ve endured all trip. This is also the highest camp site, at about 9,500 ft.
There is a hand pump for water that fascinates Katie, so we have to go check that out.
Amazingly, despite being 30 miles from civilization, we actually have a cell signal for once. I check in with She Who Must Be Obeyed, Katie talks to her, and then I check in with my mother, who’s following our progress on a map. I inform her that her other son has just wondered off into the bear infested woods to get firewood, armed with nothing but a small axe. She starts panicking and tells me to go get him straight away.
We get the fire going, eat, and Katie recaps all the things she’s seen for real now, that she learnt about on cartoons – snow, fishing, beavers etc.
This is the first campsite that had made me nervous – part of it is the remoteness, and part is the other people. The previous camp site all had families staying there – this one Katie appears to be the only kid, and I just can’t get the dueling banjo’s from Deliverance
out of my head. Some people even have Canoe’s with them. This is the first time on the trip that I would have felt safer bringing a gun with us. My brother feels similar.Things don’t improve, when right as the sun sets, we hear a bugle being played out of nowhere – as soon as it finishes whoever played it yells something. My brother asks what was yelled – I offered it sounded like “Charge!” to me, and that the cavalry was probably charging up the hill as we speak, while they load the canons and the infantry will appear over the rise on our left flank. Both my brother and me recognized the bugle call, but couldn’t put a name to it. However the Katie claims it the “Last Post”. That sounds right – how on earth does she know that at 5? Upon returning home, we find out it was actually Taps (which is basically the American version – it was the British Army that used Last Post to signal the end of the day). What we didn't figure out is who played it, or why exactly.
Once we are sure the cavalry isn’t coming, it's off to bed to get out of the mosquitos.
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