Douglas in Douglas
Wyoming, that is. We are staying in Douglas, a small city about 55 miles east of Casper. This is the second place this week we’ve found where the city has a park that allows overnight camping for tents and RV’s. This place even has free, hot showers. And I needed a hot shower this evening because I rode 90 miles today, 17 of which were on a beautiful gravel county road that offered nary a hint of shade.
Yesterday we spent the night in a campsite by the Alcova Dam, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. When we awoke, the omnipresent haze from forest fires made the sun appear as a small, pale, pink orb, as if it had been rendered by an artist designing a skyscape on an alien planet.
Small Towns in the West
My route takes me through small towns, primarily. Sometimes they are just a dot on a map with a name which turns out to be nothing but a few houses. Other times, there is a post office, a gas station, which may or may not have a general store, a few hardscrabble houses, and nothing else. Some towns are small, local agricultural hubs and have businesses that cater to farmers. A few others are county seats and have an actual downtown that has not been eviscerated by a WalMart or other big-box store. A regional peculiarity is that what would be called a town back east (an incorporated jurisdiction with a population of 10,000 residents) qualifies as a city here in the west.
There are towns located close to the National Parks, National Forests, or National Recreation Areas that rely on tourism for their economic survival. These towns typically have a showy, tourist façade where you can pay way too much for food, gasoline, souvenirs, or anything else that you require or desire. You have to search to get a sense of the real town behind its tourist-attraction persona.
On the whole, people in these small towns have been very cordial to us (partly, I think, because we look like them). I have found, to my surprise, that small-town western “nice” is a few degrees cooler than the midwestern “nice” that I have grown accustomed to in Ohio. Stanley, Idaho, seemed to be a magnet for young people, and the attitude and service I received reminded did not give me a warm feeling, almost as if they were doing me a favor by placing my order. This was in stark contrast to Lander, Wyoming, also a magnet for young people, and where the smiles were genuine.
Even though I look like the locals, it is easy for them to identify me as an outsider, especially when I enter a store in my cross-country bicycle outfit. I find that the smaller the town, the more distant the look I get from the locals. They are outwardly polite, but I am an outsider, and therefore, in their insular world, I am “the other.” For the most part, I am not traveling a well-established bicycling route, such as the norther tier or the TransAmerica trail so they are not accustomed to seeing many cyclists.
On second thought, there is the possibility that they give me a distant look because I smell and my face is smeared with zinc oxide from the sunscreen.
Many of the places that are mere dots on the map are typically run-down and sad-looking. They are often economically distressed, especially the small towns in Wyoming that grew up around an extraction industry (such as uranium, which went bust in the late 1980s) and have slowly crumbled as people departed for greener pastures. Some of these small places that are not economically distressed, such as the small farming communities, are extremely insular and conservative. To borrow a joke from Dennis Miller, these are the kind of places that if the Olympic torch were to pass through town, guys would try to light farts off of it.
Welcome to Wyoming
The other day when I was riding from Dubois to Riverton on US 26, I pulled in to a Wyoming Department of Transportation rest stop. I noticed a guy get into a van and drive away. Now, if you’ve glanced at some of the selfies I have posted on the Gallery page, you’ve probably noticed that I wear an orange neck buff, which I pull up over my nose and mouth to protect my nose and lips from getting burned. Anyway, as I was negotiating entering the rest area, I hear the guy from the van scream, “Hey!! There is no virus, you stupid sonofabitch!!”
Which makes him an idiot twice-over.
The Sounds of Pickup Trucks
On quiet roads, I can hear a vehicle coming from behind me for some distance. Typically, I can tell without looking that a pickup truck is going to pass me from the unique whine of their wide tires. Sometimes, with the help of a little imagination, the sound that a pickup truck’s tires make is the same sound made by an Imperial TIE fighter from Star Wars.