Day Three: Laramie Wyoming
After taking Loona for a nice long jaunt around Robert Redford's "Nature paths", I left Sundance yesterday with the goal of making it one hundred miles North of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I figured if I made it that far, I could consider my goal of the South Dakota Badlands realistic. Well... I don't know... I didn't make it even as far as Cheyene, because I kept getting distracted and stopping for dumb reasons. I was telling my friend on the phone yesterday that I might be the only person who has ADD and OCD. I regularly live the torture of being obsessive and unable to focus at the same time. I don' t know why it's so important to me that I see the Badlands. I have no defendable reason and it's a huge detour. But I just feel like I HAVE to get there. At the same time, I keep throwing sand in the gears and fucking up my chances of going.
Yesterday was quite an ADD adventure too. I left Sundance and started trecking north of Salt Lake City. As soon as I crossed over in Wyoming, I was officially in a place I'd never been. And it looked like it. Wyoming is amazing. I really don't know how an evil cunt like Dick Cheney could have come out of such a beautiful place. The landscape beside the highway is like a bad cowboy painting, but amazing and not bad at all. Everytime I came over a new rise on the highway, or turned a corner, I'd say "Oh my god, Loona, look at this shit."
I wish I knew thing ONE about the landscape I've been seeing. There's this one part where it stretches in all directions with barren, green, (but not grassy) land with huge ant-hill like lumps everywhere. But mostly it's just stunning stretches of nature with rolling hills. Here's where the ADD kicked in. I wanted to make time but I badly wanted to touch this land and walk around in it. I was in an area that was so rural, most of the exits are "Ranch exits" which are there just for the rancher that owns the land. When you get off at these exits, there are serious fences keeping you from the land. I don't know how they did it but someone has managed to cordon off and privatize huge chunks of the planet. I couldn't find an in.
Finally I pulled off in a small town, and drove to the edge of town, thinking I would find some open land there. The best I could do was a small field behind a bowling alley.
I left there disappointed and now very late. But a few miles later, I saw an exit leading down to a dirt road and a huge open area with no fence! I pulled off, drove down the dirt road until my car was just right in the middle of Wyoming. I got out, looked up at a big, spectacular rising (hill? Mountain? Something in between) and decided that Loona and I would get out of the car, walk right to it, and climb on up it. We'd done it before in New Mexico. Why not here? (it looked a lot bigger than the one in New Mexico.) So I put on my boots, grabbed two cameras, one film one digital, and set out. It felt great. Loona ran in circles, having the time of her life.
Before we could reach the lump of land I wanted to climb, there was this little creek of running water.
Loona jumped right in and started biting the water, her favorite stupid thing to do.
I walked along the edge trying to find a place to cross or jump over. But it was too wide and running pretty fast. Oh well. No climbing today. But then I thought, hold on. Why can't I just take off my boots and socks and walk across? It doesn't look very deep. And something inside told me "Because, stupid, you're not that guy. You're not the guy who walks across a creek with your pants rolled up." But then I told that voice. "Hey. Fuck you. What do you know? Maybe I am that guy? Why can't I be that guy? Oh my god. I am totally that guy!" So I took off my boots, rolled up my pants and stepped into the cold brown water. As soon as both of my feet were submerged, I mean the very instant that the second foot landed on some slippery rocks below, I realized "Yeah. I'm not that guy. Noooo. I am NOT, sir. I am So not that guy. I mean, I might be able to find his number somewhere around here if you wait a minute, but I am way fucking not that guy."
But then I thought, "Wait. Maybe I'm that guy who can put his boots on and n ot care that they get wet and just crosses with them on, so he doesn't have to be afraid of slipping on a rock in his bare faggoty feet!" So I pulled my boots back on, stepped back into the water and felt great because (even though I was ruining my beloved Chipewa boots) I could walk on those rocks with no problems. So I stomped right into that creek, one step, two steps and with step three I was suddenly in up to my thighs and there were no rocks. I was now standing in VERY thick mud and my feet were suddenly sinking into this mud REALLY FAST! I immediately started laughing because this was a hilarious way to die. My boots were laced on really tight and I couldn't pull a foot out and I seriously was just going to be sucked in the mud and drown standing up! The actual fear of this forced me to yank a foot up and frantically clod back to shore, where Loona met me, wagging her tail nervously and licking my face, because she saw the whole thing. Before going back to the car, I got back into the water to take one picture with the self timer so you could all see how stupid I look.
Okay, so I figured get back in the car and make for Cheyenne. But as I went back to the highway, I could see that the dirt road continued along the side of the highway and thought "Why don't I just stay on it till the next exit?" So I headed East on this little road, which went right along bit Route 15. But then it started veering off and away from the highway. My navigator, in it's female voice, calmly kept reminding me to get back on track. But I turned her volume down and kept going. The little dirt road went sharply to the south, over the creek that I couldn't cross by foot and plunged right into the Wyoming of it all. I pushed the gas and just plowed right in, until it was just me, dirt road and amazingness on all side. The dirt road became rough and gravelly, and my car was kicking up a huge cloud of dust, but I kept going and going.
Loona had no idea what was going on. The navigator somehow found the road I was on, and told me that if I kept going for three more miles, it would connect iwth another small road that went along the railroad tracks and back to the higway. So I wen tthe three miles and sure enough, the road went under the tracks and curved sharp to the right onto another road.
Now this road was much less a road that the first one. It was only exactly wide enough for my car, very lumpy, with lots of brush growing down the middle which was scraping along the bottom of my car.
I started giggling nervously, knowing that this was incredibly stupid. This car has all wheel drive, but it's not an off road vehicle. The AWD on an Infinity G35X is made to keep you from slipping on poor people's blood, not for traversing real Wyoming landscape.
As I went along, the "road" skirted closer and closer to the railroad tracks till it was right up against them. Soon, there was no road. I realized that all I was doing was driving on the gravel at a bad sideways slope along the side of some railroad tracks. It was crazy!
I looked on the navigator and sure enough it was denying there was ever a road here. However, as I zoomed out, I could see a road offf to the left somewhere in the middle of nothing. So, fuck it, I made a left and just started driving on Wyoming without even the pretense of a road! I never did find any road. But I took this picture of Loona in the dirty car, in the middle of nothing with a train going by.
Then I retraced my steps and found the highway about half an hour later, having wasted the ENTIRE afternoon. As soon as I hit the highway, it got dark, rainy and I got sleepy. I only wanted to find the first place to sleep and that was Laramie.
So now I'm in Laramie, which sounds all Westerny and shit, but it is also where Matthew Shepard was killed and, not to take that lightly, but I'm not surprised. I arrived here at 10:00pm last night and with bleary, road weary eyes, searched for a place to stay (fuck camping, folks. Sorry.). I wanted to stay in a motel downtown because it seems like a very busy and active town and I wanted to experience it. But everywhere I went people just seemed bitter and mean. Every motel has nasty, lumpy-headed dudes standing in front of their open rooms drinking beer, like they're all there because they hit their wives and had to leave for the night so she wouldn't call the police. Lots of pick up trucks with shirtless guys sitting on the back just sneering at you for zero reason. I finally found an "Amerihost" right by the highway. Fuck it. I don't want to experience Laramie. I'm not one of those red-state phobic types but really, fuck Laramie. I'm out of here.
I don't know if I'll make it to the badlands now. The ADD might have beat the OCD. We'll see.
(ps. to be fair to Laramie, I just had breakfast and posted this entry at an internet cafe place with very nice people and as I drive around town this morning I can see that it's actuallya lovely, old University Town chock full of nice people. So please ignore what I wrote above. I'm leaving it in with this disclaimer instead of erasing it, because it still reflects the way I felt when I arrived last night...)
LCK