Goodbye, Wyoming, Until Next Year....

My cowboy hat proudly wears the Jay Box Dot brand of Wagons West, in the form of a little pin. The survivors were given the pin so that we can recognize each other any where in the world...

The two Percherons pulling the wagon are named Black Jack and Zorro.

Of Cowboys and Farriers

One of the wranglers, Craig, was notable in that he did not sport world-class facial hair. This may be because during the autumn and winter he is a teacher. The rest of the boys, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Col. Sanders is on the right, Craig across from him, and Paul, the head wrangler, between me and Craig. Out of the shot is Jack, a cook and wagon master, who also had a mustache that a cossack would envy. Some of the hats seemed to date from the 19th century. Though mine was the most stylish (stressed leather Stetson), it would take me the rest of my life to sweat on it in order to match the cowboy hats on display at Wagons West.

The farrier's equipment had to be seen to be believed. His pickup towed a small trailer and what looked like a long table. The "table" was mounted on hydraulic lifts. A horse was lined up parallel to the table, a gate swung shut to make sure the horse stayed put, and big leather straps were slung under the horse and under the head. Then the platform gently tilted until the horse was off the ground and the hooves were secured by leather straps. The farrier went into action then: off with the old shoes, the hooves were trimmed by hand, then an electric sander would smooth down the bottom of the hoof, the shoes were fitted by shaping cold shoes on an anvil (a nightmarish procedure for the uninitiated who try it for the first time), and the shoes were then nailed into place. Only the outside wall of the hoof is dead tissue, a kind of protein; it is lined with living tissue and the bottom internal portion of the hoof is also living tissue, called the frog, which is essential for adequate circulation of blood through the leg. The nails are angled in such a way that they do not penetrate living tissue, although such accidents do occur from time to time and require medication. After the shoe is on, the hoof is sanded again to make sure the hoof is smoothly in contact with the shoe. The platform then slowly comes back to verticle and the horse is deposited on its feet.

These horses have undergone this procedure for years. Some lie quietly and patiently, but others are never going to get used to it, and the head wrangler or Kay, the Wagons West main honcho, has to comfort the horse by stroking its face and head. Fat lot of good it does, too.

The Trail Ride From Hell

By day four, most of us were finding insect bites we didn't know we had and bruises that seemed to spring from nowhere. Mary had developed a huge blister (fortunately she had been a nurse and knew what to do) and decided to stay in camp for a day. That morning I caught a glimpse of myself in the bottom of my coffee cup as I upended it to get the last dregs, and it was shocking enough to make me glad we had no mirrors.

After our usual monstrous breakfast, we headed out. I was glad to be on Rooster again. The day before, he had been returned to camp to be shod, and I had ridden Dodo, a less than wonderful experience. He was big and fat and I couldn't get a leg on him since my legs sort of stuck out at right angles to his fat belly. The saddle was listing to starboard too and I couldn't get it straightened out. Then as we traveled along a tiny path on the edge of a long, long drop, the amateurs at the back of the Indian file somehow managed to get their horses all pushed up against one another while they gawked at the wonderful view, and one horse tried to kick another one. His hoof landed on a lady's shin, and she howled out. It scared both me and Dodo, who shied violently. I managed to keep him away from the edge of the path and I let Craig, one of the cowboys, know I was having trouble with him. He helped me with Dodo while another wrangler checked out the situation at the back of the line. Then at another point as we crossed a small muddy stream, Dodo seemed to act like he didn't want to put his feet in the water. Before I could begin to handle him, though, he decided to cross and all was well during the rest of the ride except for the blasted saddle.

All was wonderful up to lunchtime. While we were out, the camp was packed up in record time, the chuckwagon folded and stowed, and "The Ladies" was emptied and transported to the new camp. God help whoever had to do that little job. If you are just dying to know about it, it seems that the tray is pulled out from under the potty seats, covered with a metal lid, and left in situ until it can be taken out and cleaned by a service that does that kind of thing. I asked Jack who got that particular duty, and he said whoever ran the slowest. Pick-up trucks pulled the chuchwagon and storage wagons to the next camp site, which was set up and ready to go by the time we got there after the post-lunch ride--tents and all, plus of course a clean "The Ladies".

During the afternoon ride, three people who had never ridden until then were hoisted onto their mounts: a little kid on Hammer, the fat mule everyone adored, a tall adolescent, and an overweight kid that Paul, the head wrangler, had his eye on for what can only be described as remedial activities. Paul made him help taking down the posts that held the chuckwagon awnings (that in itself deserves a blog!), corrected him every time he did something inconsiderate, and put him behind the Col.'s horse as we started out after lunch. These characters--the young people and Hammer--were responsible for the ensuing chaos.

The Kid, as he will be known from this point on, could do nothing with his horse. If it decided to wander over to the side of the path to snack, if it wanted to stop and poop or scratch, that's what happened. Each time the Kid's gentle mount came to a quiet halt, the Kid was helpless. He was holding the reins at the very end, for one thing. While others shouted instructions at him and his mother got desperate, the Col. would have to stop, ride over to the Kid, and get the horse back on the path and moving.

At first this didn't bother me or Karina, who was riding with us on her horse Cinder to the new camp. Cinder was huge, black, and gorgeous, a draft-horse cross-bred. The scenery was simply magnificent as we took a road along a rushing, icy stream that ran through wild flower fields and rock formations. At one point, the road was right up against the stream, and Hammer the mule, deciding that he was thirsty, wandered off for a drink. The little kid on him, brother of the Kid, panicked. I'm sure that Hammer seemed to him some kind of uncontrollable monster. The little boy pulled back on the reins, but he too had them by the very end and all he did was slowly slip back and sideways off the mule in a rather undramatic fall. As he reached the ground, he hit his head on one of Hammer's back hooves. The boy was not injured, but of course this brought the entire group to a halt as the boy was attended to, Hammer was pulled back from the stream, and the child was talked into getting back on him--which he did for a little while. The event seemed to strike panic into the heart of the adolescent, and he announced his intention of dismounting and walking to camp. Nothing his parents could say talked him out of it, so Paul asked me to hold his horse while he straightened the situation out. We now had one unridden mount.

A few yards more and the little boy on Hammer went into panic again as Hammer stopped to snack, and he had his feet out of the stirrups and was leaning back in the same position that caused his fall. I yelled at him to put his feet in the stirrups, which he did, but he simply refused to ride any longer. Paul had to ride ahead of us into camp in order to bring the van for the people on foot and a wrangler to take back the riderless mounts. By this time, we were hot, tired, sore, sunburned, and ready for the ride to end.

On we went for what seemed like forever. You can only walk on these trail rides because a trot or jog would get all the horses going and the inexperienced riders would be in jeopardy. John, who was behind me, kept saying that just around the next bend we would find the camp. At one point he said, "It's just up ahead, Karen!" "Do you promise?" I asked him. "Yes", he replied, so I told him that was a verbal contract and if it wasn't true I was going to sue him.

Fortunately he was right, even if only by accident. Karina and I would have liked to stay a night at the new camp. It was on a small field close to the stream, which ran through a gorge of wonderful rock formations. Not only that, but supper was under way and it was Tex Mex food. But Karina and I had to say goodbye to our dear cowboys, the cooking crew, and to Mary, who broke into tears. We looked forward to getting to our motel in Jackson Hole and having a shower, but once we were clean we could easily have gone straight back to the camp.

Darrel drove us into town in a van, and the family of the adolescent who chickened out was also in the vehicle, as were John and Pat. Several people were so sore it was painful getting out of the van.

Our bags and clothes were covered in dust, and it was a toss-up what the motel receptionist thought of us--jeans, hats, chaps, and we may have smelled in spite of layer upon layer of antiperspirant!!

But the Kid had stuck it out to the end, the one person we thought would throw in the towel immediately. Who knows what dose of self-esteem he gained by helping the crew to pack up the chuckwagon, by being the kid to persist to the end of the Trail Ride From Hell while a much older boy copped out. Some people are natural psychologists, and I suspect Paul is one of those.

Wolves III

Nights were spent in a tent. Karina and I had taken sleeping bags and two small pillows. The sleeping bags occupied the entire floor of the tent, but we were lucky enough to have an extra tent set up for us that we used as a closet. That's where we put our duffle bag and two other bags. Wagons West provided pallets so we had some cushioning.

The altitude made for heat during the day, but at night it got below freezing. We would get up in the morning to find frost on the ground and on the tables and benches where we ate. In the afternoon after resting up from supper, Paul would play the guitar and sing or recite his own cowboy poetry, Col. Sanders would do tricks with a whip, but a lot of us wanted to go to bed early--well, okay, Karina, me and Mary. The night sky was unbelievable: we saw shooting stars, the Milky Way (which I hadn't seen since I lived in Michigan), and a moon so bright you didn't really need your flashlight as long as it was above the horizon.

After supper the horses were let loose. They had cowbells around their necks so that in case one or more failed to return, the cowboys would be able to locate them. It made for a surreal and beautiful experience: the horses would mill around close to camp for quite a while, cowbells tinkling, and then as it got later they would all go off far enough so that we couldn't hear them. Then, very early in the morning before sunrise, they would return. All of us waited for that moment. The sound of the bells was crystal clear in the icy air, and the horses would walk right through where our tents were set up, so we heard not just the bells but the thud of their hooves as they went past the tents. We all fell in love with the sound of the horses returning.

One night we heard the yipping of coyotes, and then shortly after that, the howling of wolves. The wolves had been very close, barely a hill away from us. They are not the Rocky Mountain wolves that are native to the region, but huge Canadian gray wolves weighing in at some 200 pounds, brought in by some government idiot who decided to even up the prey-predator situation. The result is that the Canadian wolves have almost eliminated the moose population and are making terrible inroads in the elk population too. They have killed off the native wolves or displaced them. The cowboys said they had lost only one horse to wolves in the time Wagons West has been operating (over thirty years), but the presence of wolves outside the unreachable mountain wilderness areas is disquieting. They may be getting hungrier and bolder.

The fires for cowboy coffee would be started around three-thirty in the morning. Karina and I decided the stuff is addictive. Mary and I were the first up, and we would hang out around the cooking fire and drink the brew while Mary warmed her feet near the flames and I managed to get two cups down. During the rest of the day, we were asked to always have our canteens with us in the wagons or on rides because insufficient hydration could lead to altitude sickness. As a result, Karina and I drank water until we were ready to pop, and our urine became so diluted that it was like water itself. This I know because on our first Dixie cup expedition into the woods, I managed to douse myself with most of the contents of my Dixie cup when I tripped trying to get my riding pants back up. By the time we left, I had the whole operation down to a science, but it was a considerable relief not to have to ride back to camp that afternoon smelling like pee!

On Wednesday night the talent show was held. Everyone had to participate, talented or not, and the cowboy crew did a great skit for us. Karina took the event by storm when she read her ideas for a new Wagons West brochure, that included the attractions of bathing in three ounces of water and experiencing terminal butt fatigue. It was so funny that Mary wanted it, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you find it included in the next Wagons West publicity info on Internet.

Next on the blog, the Trail Ride From Hell.

Wolves II

Karina and I were picked up in Jackson Hole by Col. Sanders. His real name is Paul, but since the head wrangler is also Paul, most people identify the Col. by his mustache, beard, and hair. After almost two hours we got to the camp. All in all there were 22 guests on the day we arrived, and we were immediately matched to our horses or assigned our wagon for a trip into the countryside. I had a full-time horse named Rooster, a young horse; most of the horses were older, but they were all sure-footed and sound. And it's a good thing, because we went up steep slopes, down steep slopes, through the woods, and along the edge of huge drop-offs where I opted to keep my eyes on Rooster's ears. Each day we rode out of camp and along a new route through the countryside. We rested at noon at some idyllic spot where we ate our lunch, then back we rode to camp by yet another route. People in the wagons sometimes fell asleep because the ride was so smooth and the scenery so soothing. That's because they didn't teeter on the edge of cliffs, get smacked in the face by branches that the greenhorn in front of you allowed to swing free, didn't have the horses try to stop to snack every couple of minutes, nor did they arrive at the camp having to be hauled bodily out of the wagon the way some of the riders had to be lowered off their mounts.

There were people of all ages. There were children and elderly folks, and almost every one of them rode at least once a day. Our dear Mary (in the picture with Karina), a lady of some 71 summers, was there for six days and she rode every day but one. John and Pat, in their late 60s, were full-time riders. John had had a heart attack (though not during a ride...) and open heart surgery. He had to be put on his horse by three cowboys and lowered down the same way, but this was the fourth trip for John and Pat to Wagons West.

And the food! We were fed into a coma. At breakfast, the girls fired up the dutch ovens and the grills under the chuckwagon awning, and cowboy coffee was ready from around six in the morning. The recipe for cowboy coffee is simple:

3 huge coffee pots and a wood fire

water

a large amount of coffee

socks from the day before

Place all ingredients together and boil until the liquid in the coffee pots is totally opaque. Serve into a cup, preferibly stainless steel which can hold up to the coffee. You can either consume the coffee with knife and fork, or simply strain it through your teeth.

There was no such thing as a single-egg serving at breakfast. Eggs were poured onto the grill in batches of two. There were rolls and toast, biscuits and gravy, bacon, saugage, fruit, and pancakes. For lunch, we made our own and put it into a cooler that was taken in the wagon to our mid-day resting spot. Supper could have been anything from pot roast or turkey with vegetables and stuffing and rolls to giant burritos smothered in cheese. For dessert you could have spice cake and other good stuff. There seemed no way you could eat everything piled onto your tray, but we managed to do it. I ate things I wouldn't have touched with a barge pole because of their calorie content, such as biscuits and gravy, yet we always felt like the mountain air and the altitude (over 8,000 feet) were sucking the calories out of us. Whatever the reason, we were always hungry enough to clean our trays. We didn't lick them 'cause other people were watching. You could go back for seconds but shame kept us from eating another batch.

In the next blog, our sleeping quarters and the nights in the Grand Teton mountain range.

The Wolves Howled Outside Our Tent...

Karina and I have returned from our fantastic adventure with Wagons West, and let's get your most burning questions out of the way here at the outset: no, there were no showers. Your washing options were a tin basin you filled with cold water, then warmed by adding hot water that was boiling over the wood fire. A wagon with four fold-down wooden shelves on the outside served as your washing-up area, and on one of the shelves a hand-held mirror had been propped. Karina and I avoided that like the plague. We really didn't want to know how we looked.

The other option was the creek, or "crick", as it is pronounced in them thar parts. The waters in this creek were about 42°F. One of our companions, Mary (more about her later), said she just wanted to see what it was like to wash her face in water that cold. One of the cowboys, probably Jack (one of the cooks), said you could find out easily enough by getting ice out of your freezer and rubbing it on your face. On our second day at the camp, several people jumped into the van that would take them to the creek; two of the Wagons West crew went along and actually bathed, at least partially, in the creek. They looked a little blue when they returned, but

on the other hand, if you, like the cowboys, have spent days and days in the wilderness, the cold was probably better than having to smell yourself.

The potty facilities were of course more important than the bathing amenities. Here you have them: "The Ladies". "The Men" was on the other side of the wagon. The chemical toilets were fine, but there were indeed nuances. You needed a flashlight to find the potty wagon at night, and it was cold as all get-out. At least it seemed that way until you sat down on that seat inside "The Ladies", when the term "cold" somehow did not quite cover the experience. It is a miracle our butts didn't stick to the seat, forcing others to pry us off like a tongue stuck to a popsicle.

Another problem was the fact that we didn't change our campsite on the third day, as was scheduled, because the farrier showed up to shoe the 30-odd horses we had with us. By day four "The Ladies" was being studiously avoided by most of us, unless the urgency of the situation made it impossible not to visit the place. Let me put this as euphemistically as possible: there are certain natural functions the products of which one would wish to remain at a distance, and the greater the distance the better. By day four, "The Ladies" had cut that distance down to an alarming extent, and several people chose Imodium over relief just in order to avoid the experience.

As for the trail rides, well, let's just say that Karina and I became experts at Dixie cup facilities and even began to prefer them over "The Ladies" by day four.

In our next blog, more pictures and comment on the adventure itself.