Wyoming is full of gorgeous scenery and a lot of history! To get here from Alberta, we spent a long day driving through Montana. After leaving Dinosaur Provincial Park, the day was full of road stops. We spent awhile at the border crossing- we were in the line with the meticulous U.S. border agent. Luckily she approved our passports and the apple we had with us.
We drove south trying to get as close to Red Lodge, Montana as possible for a single night in a motel. We wanted to drive a portion of the Beartooth Scenic Highway in the morning, before heading into Wyoming for two nights of camping near the Wind River Reservation. Unfortunately, we ended up still a couple hours from Red Lodge at the point when we needed to stop for the night. We’d had a few stops for gas and bathrooms (which Mickie now prefers to call “washrooms” in true Canadian fashion). We’d also stopped for a leisurely dinner at Tall Boys Tavern in Hobson, Montana. They had a nice selection of burgers and steaks on their menu, along with Rocky Mountain Oysters, which I declined to order, in spite of Jon’s encouragement.
After dinner, we only drove another 45 minutes or so to Harlowton, which is a very small town in Montana. We spent a surprisingly comfortable night in a clean and spacious room at the Country Side Inn. We were quite impressed with the nice accommodations, considering that the price was very reasonable and the outside appearance was nothing fancy.
Friday, we got a fairly early start that turned into a very leisurely morning in Harlowton. We thought we’d stop for a quick breakfast somewhere, but the place that drew us, the Whistle Stop Cafe in the historic Graves Hotel, turned out to be too fun and too charming for us to leave! The owner, an older gentleman named Rick, took our order and served us a delicious breakfast. We were the only customers at the time, besides another older guy who eventually joined Rick in sharing some of the history and lore of their small cowboy town. We looked around the antique shop that was part of the cafe, and Rick told about his efforts to revive the historic hotel, originally built in 1908. So far, the cafe and shop are open but they aren’t accepting guests, so the staircase was roped off; they plan to open the hotel in the near future.
With access to good WiFi, and Rick’s permission, we decided to use the hotel as our home base for checking in with the Lighthouse students. We were checking in later than usual in order to see the older students present their reports on the Native American regions and tribes they’d been studying. It was cool to be able to show them the landscape from the patio of the hotel, as most of the kids had been doing research on the plains people. A couple students had research the Crow and Blackfoot people, who had inhabited the region right around Harlowton. After showing the students the landscape and the historic hotel, and introducing them to Rick, we settled at a table in the unused formal dining room to watch students present their reports via FaceTime. It was wonderful to see what they had been studying and exciting to know we had visited, or would be visiting, places to view land and artifacts related to their presentations.
After our early-afternoon Lighthouse check in, we decided not to stress about time and took the route to Red Lodge as we left Harlowton. It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, but we decided to take the opportunity to drive several miles up the Beartooth Highway, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful drives in America! We drove up about 12 miles to the first viewpoint, with a creek side stop along the way to admire the forested scenery in the bottom of the valley.
Heading back through Red Lodge, we enjoyed the last of the Montana scenery and soon drove into Wyoming. We headed straight to Thermopolis, hoping to get a nice campsite for a couple nights, but our options were very limited. Scenic campgrounds were scarce and, when we pulled into the one I’d been considering based on my research, it felt too small and crowded to invest two full nights in. Plus, it was raining and I was not looking forward to setting up in the dark, cold, AND rain.
We called around to see about a motel for the night, but everything was completely booked. So, we decided to give the Eagle RV Park a shot, and I’m glad we did. Yes it was crowded and small, but the people were very nice and the campground has lots of pretty trees! We checked in, dropped the trailer, and went out for pizza in town. By the time we got back, the rain had stopped and we could set up the pop-up more comfortably. At about 45 degrees, it was definitely a lot warmer than our campsite in Alberta. We didn’t plan to settle in, so no awning or campfire. Our goal was to get a good night’s sleep, enjoy the sights and historical spots around the Wind River Reservation on Saturday, and roll out early on Sunday to head towards the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Saturday, we spent the day exploring the area. We learned about the Northern Arapaho and Shoshone people who have shared the Wind River Reservation lands for over 100 years. After a beautiful drive through Wind River Canyon, we visited the Wind River Heritage Center in Shoshoni, which houses a wildlife exhibit, displaying local animals, and a wax museum that takes visitors through important events in Wyoming’s history as a state, beginning with the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was a jump forward in time, since we’ve mostly been studying Native American history and culture pre-contact. It was a bit of a mental jolt, but the lives of mountain men, explorers, and settlers was also interesting, but somewhat depressing to learn about knowing the impact this contact had on the land and the people we had been studying thus far.
After spending time at the heritage center, with two very eager and informative guides (we got the sense they don’t get too many visitors this time of year), we headed on down the road. We stopped at Crux, a coffee house in Lander, for a delicious lunch. We then explored the Fort Washakie area. We learned more about the history of Sacajawea, who was of the Wind River Shoshone, and visited her gravesite on the reservation. It was moving to read about her impact on U.S. history, guiding the Lewis and Clark expedition successfully from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, as a teenage girl with an infant. While there are questions about whether she is actually buried in Wyoming, there is no doubt that she was of the Wind River people and there seems to be great pride in claiming her as theirs.
We finished the day with a visit to the Northern Arapaho Experience Room, a small museum in the Wind River Hotel and Casino. The most interesting aspect, for me, was the display that emphasized the importance of the bison to the plains people. Seeing diagrams and examples of how all the different parts of the animal were used by the plains tribes made it even more horrifying to realize what the U.S. government had truly done in supporting the elimination of this animal. Bison once numbered in the tens of millions and had shrunk to only a few thousand by the time Yellowstone was designated a national park in 1872. Yellowstone is now the only spot where bison (also called buffalo) roam free.
Overall, we took in a lot of beautiful scenery and quite a bit of sad history. This morning, as we headed away from the Wind River Reservation, we read the details of the Treaty of 1868 which established reservations for the people of the plains. Like every treaty that came before, it did little to truly protect the native people and did much to hurt them in the long run. Of course, the treaty was ultimately discarded by the U.S. government once gold was discovered in the Black Hills, which is the next stop on our journey through the history and lands of North America.
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