sheridan in color

Pics from my recent journey to Sheridan. (See "Sheridan, Wyo Rodeo")



An old (and apparently in danger) barn I found on the west edge of town. There's a great deal of tension in the photo on the right.



After the parade, the Indians (Native Americans? After this trip I can't tell which is more PC) meet for song and dance. I must admit I was disappointed to see that the chief is white.



There isn't a roadtrip view I love more than a big green field or a big stormy sky in the late afternoon like these near Storey (left) and Sheridan (right).



Hard to imagine this lazy-lookin' bull springing a bareback rider into left field just a few hours in the future.



I'm obsessed with old signage. And I quickly became fascinated with the colors on this building.



Some texture on the facade of the Sheridan Commercial Co. building. An out-of-place lion greets visitors to the city park.



There's sort of a Western Hopper-ish feel to these shots that I love. The colors of the boarded windows are interesting, too.

sheridan, wyo rodeo

First of all, is Wyoming serious with this sky? The clouds, huge conglomerates of cottonballs--no, there is no better analogy--stretch to the horizon, as far as the eye can see and splatter the sagebrush-ridden landscape with shadows like sunspots on Mother Earth's rolling belly. I couldn't get enough of it, which was good because I had ten hours to kill.

This was taken about an hour outside of Evanston, somewhere near Rawlins--country I had not traveled through since I graduated from elementary school. As the headline suggests, Pam, Lane and I were forging our way through dry southern Wyoming to my favorite Smalltown USA: Sheridan.

Past Rock Springs, we drove on the stretch of highway that houses modern largess ranches The Pathfinder and Sun Ranch. These monsters literally go on for miles and miles. Historical Martin's Cove sits on the west side of the two-lane highway, just south of Devil's Gate. As a kid, I always got sad and curious around this nexus of pioneer and homesteader trails. I felt the same at 26. Independence Rock, carved up with the names of young pioneers, marks the spot. I realize this at the same time that Mom says, "There is a special Spirit here." It resonates.

After a bout with Burger King in Casper, it was on to Sheridan. We arrived around midnight; Grandma and Grandpa stayed up to greet us. Lane and I shared the airbed and Mom crashed on the couch in Linda's little one-room apartment atop Mike's Electric (as in Michael Demitri Janich, our great-grandfather).



From there it was all memory lane: black licorice ice cream at the park, cold cereal with Grandpa in the morning, the drive to Janich Lane in Big Goose, and classic Main Street under the too-close, too-hot Wyoming sun.

But what would Sheridan be without its rodeo? I've never been too excited about the sport, at least not until Lane's passion sparked my own. Rather than the sad, roping of calves necks that I usually see, this time I was able to interpret the timed events as a dying game made up of dying skills that grew out of real-life ranching. I lost all interest in the eight seconds of brainless fame that mark the bareback, roughstock events--if this is where the modern cowboy is headed, America is in trouble.

Perhaps the best part of the Sheridan, Wyo Rodeo are the Indian Relays (pronounced "really") in which some young, barely-clothed Crow or Sioux Indian risks his life to win a cash purse of $15,000. The young Brave hops on a barely-broken horse at the gunshot beginning, and proceeds to run the entire length of the outside arena before coming back to center court. Once there, he leaps off that horse for another. Mind you, there is no saddle, only a bridle and many of these youngsters don't make the daring jump from horse to ground, and ground to horse. I can't believe this stuff is legal. Here's a favorite shot. Check out the ensemble.



And then there's the classic home-spun Rodeo parade down Main Street, which features a classic high school marching band; a guy with long, blonde hair dancing around in cavalry regalia; the elderly Elk Club members doing figure eights in go-carts; the also elderly Shriners Club band playing middle-eastern music--their float trailed by llamas and an exotic camel; and my favorite, float upon float boasting Sheridan's recently awarded title of "The No. 1 Western Town in America." It truly is, down to the land we stole from the Indians and my very own great-great-grandparents who were allowed to settle there in the Indians' stead.



The Crow Indians always win for their costuming. It's pretty awesome. The female costume is adorned with row after row of elk teeth. From far away they look like shells.



The "crazy" cavalryman who for some reason reminded me of Custer.



Check out the original J.C. Penney sign behind this WWII Vets car.



My favorite float: Homemade cowboy with pointer finger to heaven: "No. 1 Western Town"--right in front of Dan's Western Wear, a Main Street classic.

we head to (west) yellowstone

With Curtis' dreamy work schedule (I choose not to mention twelve-hour and graveyard shifts) and my recent switch from full-time to freelance writing, we were provided a four-and-a-half-day weekend with which we decided to enjoy the splendor of Island Park, Idaho, where the Smith Family owns what is arguably the best cabin EVER.

While there, we ventured to the top of nearly 12,000-foot Sawtell Peak and into Yellowstone National Park. Both were awesome. Atop Sawtell, I felt feelings and saw sights reminiscent of an excursion to Switzerland. Yellowstone was equally awe-inspiring. According the History Channel's show titled something like "Mega Disasters" it's gonna be a sad day for all of North America when that mother blows. (I'm speaking of the supervolcano that lies beneath it all, not Old Faithful.)

Like true biologists, we decided to take note of all the wildlife we observed over the course of the weekend:

• 1 bald eagle
• 1 frog (species unknown)
• 1 gigantic porcupine, destined to prick Curtis
• 1 moose
• Approx. 20 elk
• Approx. 100 dred-locked bison
• 1 blue heron

Unlike the porcupine, Curtis was destined for the mud pots. As my friend David Whittaker once said as a young boy, "stinky things are cool." The same philosophy holds true for my full-grown husband.

Destination: Mud Pots was not a let down, in the least. With names like "Dragon's Mouth," the mud pots in Yellowstone are a real-life series of the Bog of Eternal Stench. "Smell Baaaaaaad" from childhood favorite "Labrynth" continually echoed in my head as I walked the boardwalks from stink pot to stink pot.

Signage informed us that if we so much as stepped one toe outside the designated pathway, we were likely to lose our limbs or our lives in the mineral-packed, bowely waters. The bison, however, were not daunted and continued to bask pool side-like near the gaseous, rumbling shores despite the Earth's delicate crust at such junctures.

On beast got up and decided to relieve himself right on the boardwalk; thus creating two unsightly obstacles: his waste and ... himself. That's when I decided it was time to get back to our thankfully airtight automobile. Like I said, "Smell baaaaaaad."