The Not So Wild West

We got a late start Sunday.  I am a big planner for trips but for some reason, I had not come up with a plan Sunday.  We were planning on taking a drive to get a better feel for Wyoming but where?  Stuff is far apart here so its not like you can hop over to another bug city in an hour or so.  We also thought about going South to the Rockies but we were heading there Tuesday. 

We decided to make a loop.  We would head Northwest towards Medicine Bow and then see how far we wanted to go.  Laramie only has 32,000 people, you get to the edge of town and it is a wide open prairie.  The state feels really empty most of the time but it has a lot going on like grass, brush and animals.  A surprising number of animals,  lots of cows, horses, chipmunks, deer and even a coyote or two.

There is a surprising amount of history.  First we stopped at the fossil cabin.  The area has a lot of old bones.  The cabin is supposedly built from dinosaur bones.  It was being renovated but was still cool.

In the town of Medicine Bow we saw the Virginian an early 1900s hotel still in operation.  The town also has a rather large wind farm.  We pulled over to take some pictures, they have a lot of convenient places to stop and see nature and man made stuff.

I decided to pull out the drone and had some fun.  Was not sure how well it would fly at such a high altitude but I gave it a shot.  It flew well though it does warn you that the air is thin.  After some flying, we were off again.  We curved around headed South to flank the mountains we visited yesterday.

After passing through Saratoga, famous for its natural spring, we entered Medicine Bow National Forest again from the West.  We saw the park from the East yesterday so this was like watching the back of water.  Well, not really but today we had glorious weather and we had unfinished business.  Luckily we had bought the two day pass on Saturday thanks to our earlier conundrum.

Lake Marie was much better in the sun, stunning does not do it justice.  We walked the path around the lake and met some other tourist and people playing with their dog.  We even got involved in the fetch.  The dog was quite cute and quite into retrieving his stick from the lake.

After Marie it was back to mirror lake.  Good views but lots of wind made too many ripple to get a good mirror.  Also tourists on the water kept photobombing my shots.

We revisited the Libby flats post and shot some more pictures in the non rain.  The last stop was the scenic overlook where we could now stand end enjoy the view.  There is a marker there to the 1955 United 409 tragedy.  It is what we now call a CFIT, controlled flight into terrain. A DC-4 impacted the mountain costing 66 lives.  They say fragments of the plane remain on the mountain.

It was time to head out, we made a quick stop in Centennial for a snack and then back to Laramie.  We took a short break for food and to re-packed and then we were off to town.  Why re-pack?  The great thing about flying yourself is no baggage fees.  When we started flying as a family we had to pack smart because we were weight limited.  

As we have moved to bigger planes and now only have two of us, weight is less of an issue.  When we were packing, we didn’t quite know what the temperatures would be so we tended to take some extra shirts and such.  Basically we have way too many clothe with us so we took only what we will need for Tuesday to Saturday and put that in one duffel, the other duffel will get left in the plane.

Once we re-packed we headed into town to see the Mural project but that’s another story.

Mostly Nothing With Something Special

When you cross into Kansas you know it. It’s flat and there’s not much there. The synthetic vision in the plane is often useful in navigating but in Kansas it was just brown.

When we got to Wyoming CC remarked that it had a lot of nothingness. The nothingness has more character with rolling hills and vegetation but almost no trees. While this is true of the South East portion of the state, it does have some interesting and beautiful features.

Saturday we headed off to Mountain Bow National Forest. The Forest is about an hour West of Laramie. We were on the hunt for some stunning views but first we had to find our way.  As we headed out Google maps suggested an alternate route and 3 miles in the paved road ended. Not wanting to do 7 miles on gravel, we backtracked a bit. 

This would not be our last encounter with dirt roads. Wyoming has many.  We got smarter though and mostly stayed on pavement until we were in the park.  Entering the area we stopped to pay the use fee and hit two snags.  We did not have $5 and we had no pen. The first problem we solved with a $10 bill, you can pay for 2 days on the same pass.  As we pondered our next problem a truck pulled up with two rangers.  I asked if they had a pen and they let us use one, who said your government is not useful.  

With the problems solved we drove on to Lewis lake.  The road was again gravel and we got the rental nice and dusty, not as bad as the badlands but it was pretty bad.  The park was pretty busy but we scored a good space along the road.  It required some tight parallel parking which CC was skeptical of but the car was soon in the space.  Something about the steep drop off made her nervous, go figure.

We headed off on a 2 mile hike, sounds easy but it had a good vertical component and we were starting around from about 9000 feet.  The path was pretty good and we worked our way up the mountain.  The further we went the more vertical it became.  The trail does go to the top but that part is rated as hard.  We stopped when we could get a view of the mountains, Lewis and Libby lake.  

The trip down was easier but we heard a rumble of thunder in the distance.  It did not repeat so we enjoyed the lake view at the bottom before moving the car over to Libby lake.  Libby was less walking and more looking.  The lake also had nice picnic tables so we sat out and had some snacks while enjoying the breeze off the lake.

When we started, it was in the mid 70s but the temperature had dropped and we were glad we had brought our jackets.  Our next stop was Libby flats observation post.  You are up at 10,847 feet before you climb the stairs, we were really starting to miss that oxygen.

Standing on the tower, the rain in the distance seemed closer and it had gotten quite cloudy and cold, like 52 degrees.   You can see the Rockies but with the haze and wildfire smoke they weren’t very clear.

Our next stop was Mirror Lake and Lake Marie.  As we arrived it started to drizzle.  We took some pictures but then we heard some thunder so back to the car we went.  The rain and thunder came so we sat in the car for a while. Eventually we had no more thunder and the rain turned to just a bit of a drizzle so we tried more pictures but the rains came back and harder, so back to the car.

We eventually gave up on the lake and headed back.  On the way we tried a scenic overlook but as soon as we got out the rain picked up again.  It was time to give up and so we headed down the mountain to Centennial, WY. The town is from the late 1800s and they have a cute historical museum.  The rain had mostly stopped so we gave it a shot.  It was nice and had several historical buildings but as we tried to tour the rain returned.

We had enough and headed back to the hotel for food and rest.  Google tried again to put us on dirt roads but we were smarter by then. The rain also washed the car so that was at least some benefit.  It was only filthy and didn't look like it had just completed a Baja 500.  Back in Laramie the weather was very nice so we decided to go look at the University or Wyoming. 

CC's Dad had attended back in the 60s and we think we found the housing her parents lived in back then.  Yes, you do the math, these are seriously old dorms.  We also looked at some of the cool modern buildings and artwork.  The sun was setting and it was getting late so we picked up some food and called it a day.

The land of few escalators (#27 Wyoming)

We landed in Cheyenne but we were actually going to Laramie.  No I did not get confused.  For a long time I could not get a car in Laramie. I could get a good deal on one in Cheyenne and it was close enough so we took it.  Cars did become available in Laramie close to departure but Enterprise wanted $200/day for a tiny car and we had already had a much better deal and had worked Cheyenne into the plan.

Did you know that Wyoming only has 2 sets of escalators for the entire state?  2 up and 2 down.  Wyoming is a new state for my list, 27 in the count down.  After a long day of flying, CC drove us to Laramie, it is only about 45 minutes away.  We dropped our bags, washed up and headed out.  There is a farmers market every Friday during the nice months and we were ready to stretch our legs.

We had a nice time at the market.  CC found a souvenir and we chatted with some locals.  There was odd mix of booths.  The stuff you expect like drinks, crafts, baked good, local products and produce.  They also had quite a spread of international foods being sold, no the carrots were local. 

The most surprising was takoyaki or octopus balls (No octopus don't have balls, they are dough balls with octopus).  The chef was not Japanese but she had a miniature grille and was doing a respectable job producing them.  We did not get any so no idea if they were tasty.

We walked downtown a bit after the market. It is tourist oriented with a good many bars and restaurants.   We were getting hungry and there was some good smelling BBQ at the market. 

We decided to drop by a local establishment with good reviews and picked up some smoked turkey, brisket and ribs.  The reviews were right.  After this we were pretty done.  An early departure, eight hours flying, 2 hour time change, 6000 feet of elevation  and some sightseeing had taken its toll, I was ready for some rest.

Crossing the line

We were heading out on vacation, our first stop was Cheyenne Wyoming and then on to Colorado. We just had one small problem. There was a line of weather stretching from the Great Lakes to Oklahoma.  It had some holes but as we were loading up it was hard to tell what the best plan would be because we were still five hours away from penetrating the line.

A lot can happen in five hours.  I had read all the forecasts but they seemed to be missing it and in retrospect they were pretty far off.  I decided to go direct for our first hop and then decide once we were closer.  Worst case, we would have a bigger detour.

Our first leg took us direct to KFYE, Fayette TN, just East of Memphis. The flight went perfectly until we were handed to approach.  We could not raise them.  We eventually made contact, found the airport and were cleared for the visual.  I tried to cancel IFR and again could not hear ATC. I took a chance and flipped back to center and explained my issue and he was nice and took my cancellation, problem solved.

It was a good stop. Super friendly, they pumped the gas, and nice facilities.  This let me study the weather a bit.  The line had gotten worse but there looked like we had an opening a bit North.  I filed KFYE MAP KUKL.  Once airborne departure tried to give me direct destination but that would have put into the thunderstorms.  I politely declined.

Near MAP I asked for deviations and was given wide latitude.  The ground based radars showed a soft spot and the active radar in the nose showed a good size hole with just light rain.  Usually you can see soft spots but this line went from blue sky to dark wall.

The onboard radar kept looking good and I found a softer spot with only light rain and only 5 miles thick.  I am getting better managing tilt and even though I had XM and NEXRAD to look further out, I worked the tilt to make sure I was not getting attenuation.  It takes faith in your equipment to go from blue to dark gray with no forward visibility.  The equipment worked, we went from nice skies to a slight drizzle and then just as quick as it came, we were back in blue skies. 

Our stop in Kansas was also quick and other than having to shoot the GPS approach to get in we had no issues.  It had been clearing as we arrived and outbound we able to get our clearance in the air and head off to Cheyenne. 

We had had a smooth ride until we got to Colorado. After that it was a constant chop with lots of ups and downs.  Our arrival in Cheyenne was uneventful and we soon had our car by the plane.

The direct trip is 1303 miles.  Our as flown was about 1330 miles which was pretty good considering the weather.  The Baron saved us 45 minutes  over the Bonanza assuming the same route but without the onboard radar I would have taken a much larger detour.  The second engine equates to a 60% higher fuel use per mile but I am enjoying the added safety and speed.