Denny – Monday. Today’s events required six pages in my journal, so this blog won’t truly do it justice I’m afraid. 72.7 car miles. 27+ mph winds. Steady rain until 10 am then showers off and on all afternoon. Traveled under gray skies and cold temperatures all day.
An early start – preparing our “wagon” to move, and finding a place to “park” it while we were in Salt Lake. What to do with the trailer today was a real conundrum. With the rains, we were worried the roads would be too muddy for the heavy vehicles but we shouldn’t have given it a second thought. Between the parched ground and the strong winds, by the time we got out on the road – they were relatively dry with very few shallow puddles. The “wagon” went with us all day and turns out the dirt roads were a blessing since the winds were so high the highways were closed to RV’s under 20,000 lbs
My top priority was getting back to Ft. Laramie to record Kevin sharing stories. Capturing them makes me feel like I’m allowing all of you to come along on our travels and… I just love to hear the stories!!! We tried and tried – even using the RV as a wind shield but the gales were so fierce – it completely overpowered our little audio transmitter/receiver. We even tried using TWO sound buffers! The RV was rocking in the wind just sitting at the No. Platte River Crossing.
I really didn’t know what to expect for today so the day’s “adventures” unfolded to me step by step, mile by mile. And what an adventure it was! Trail swales, interesting grave markers, gratitude for the OCTA group for their signage and plaques, beautiful river bottoms, and majestic bluffs, overflowing canals, sobering manmade efforts to divert the mighty Platte, howling wind, cow trails that led us to an exciting discovery, rattlesnake warning signs, red-tape to see historic locations, thousands of bird nests in the cliffs, do not trespass signs, Oregon trail markers, having our friend Paul (in Michigan) act as a "virtual scout" to help us navigate around a tight turn through a cattle guard via google maps shared location, following our “wagon” for mile after slow mile, and at the end of the day, being treated to an RV park that had pull through sites! (That is a BIG deal!)
I guess the neatest thing for me today was “finding” Mexican Hill. Of course, other people have found it previously, but for Kevin – it was a matter of finding it based on information from books. For me, who had never heard of it, it was a true discovery! Once again, Kevin’s mapping prowess came in handy to even get us to the area. Give that guy a map and prepare to be amazed! The roads were so bad we had to abandon the “wagon” and just went ahead as far as we could in the car. Even then, we had to hike about a mile both ways to look for it. We were above the river bottom where the canyon narrowed forcing the Battalion to go through there.
The description Kevin was going from said “a steep white rock cliff that led into a horseshoe amphitheater area below.” We walked and walked and decided it could be one of two places we saw. We opted for the one on the left. We walked quite a way without being able to see anything to confirm our choice was the right one so started following a cattle trail leading that direction. Then all of a sudden – voila! There it was. Not being the history person on this trip –it surprised me how excited I was to realize we’d found it!
