Cheyenne Frontier Days – Rodeo big daddy!

“It was fun as all get-up” so says the Country gal in me.
I mean how can you not love a scene of young, strapping cowboys mounting 1500lb bulls and raging horses to prove their manhood? 

The rodeo has a long history and Cheyenne Frontier Days is the big daddy of ‘em all. Every year in July cowboys come from all over to test their skills and battle it out for country glory.  It’s a racy, hot, exciting arena and you can’t help but get swept up in it all. There’s hundreds of rodeo events, a bunch of concerts (Kiss, Brooks and Dunn and bunch of others were on show this year), a fairground and every type of country gear you could imagine. So, put on that cowboy hat, get a few country songs for the road, and let those boots do some walking down Rodeo way…. 

Cheyenne Frontier Days

Hard bucking action in the rodeo

A cowboy from birth

Steer wrestling

Boots and Hats

Got my cowgirl hat at last!

Not a Place for Sardines – Welcome to Wyoming!

“I don’t rightly see how you folks can stand being packed like sardines down ‘ere” Bobby-Ray was commenting on living in California, or really living anywhere that wasn’t Wyoming. We’d met him a few months back in Borrego Springs, CA where he was parked somewhere way out in the desert boonies with his 5^th wheel, girlfriend and dog. He was a Wyoming homeboy with a ranch and the claim to a black-jade mine that might someday make him a fortune. But, none of it ain’t worth a hoot without a view to the horizon and a good few miles of land for breathing space between neighbours to make livin’ bearable.

Welcome to Wyoming!

It’s one of the least populated States in the US, with only 544,000 people on 97,818 sq mi (253,348 km²) of space (about 1/60 the density of Denmark) and the locals like it that way. Home of the cowboy, the rodeo and the open plains this place sure ain’t for city folk. Rush hour is a car in front of you, a good walk could take you a couple of days and everybody’s eating buffalo for dinner.

On the way here we even passed a bit of a landmark, one of the 4 towns in the US with a grand population of 1 (according to the 2000 census…although the Major claims, as my father so deftly researched, that the population had swelled to 5 by 2002 and stabilized at 3 by 2009). Lost Springs, WY was established in 1880’s by iron-workers searching for natural springs reputed to be in the area (they never found them), and has endured to this day. It’s a typical Wyoming town…a spattering of houses, a few horses, possibly a grocer and then a whole lotta nothing.

Wide open sky and the space to savor it. If you like wild country, this is definitely the place to be.

Last light

Curt Gowy State Park, WY

First light

Wild country and wide skies, WY

Big, beautiful WY sunset reflected on the side of the RV

Rush hour on I-25, WY

A Crack in the Silver Lining

“There’s no way I can fix that” said Montie, looking skeptically at the RV
“It was bound to happen” thought I, rather dejectedly

Or rather, to put it more precisely, it was bound to happen just as we entered one of the least populated States in the country coasting along into no-man’s land to stay at a remote State Park, having just put 150 miles between us and the full-service RV repair center we’d used the day before.
 
Yes, it was a lot to think about all at once.
All in all, it really just served to prove the point that Murphy’s Law has a way of finding you when you least expect it, and as much as I like being right, this was a bummer of a situation.

So, this was the scene.
A deserted Wyoming road in the pouring rain, one lone car coming towards us and one large rock ejected into the air. The rock did a perfect interpretation of Newton’s Laws of Motion following a beautiful parabola right smack into our unsuspecting $2,500 windshield and  leaving a sharp and crystal-clear 1-foot crack as a souvenir. “Drat” and other stronger expletives are really the first things that come to mind. Then, you frantically try to wipe the thing in the ridiculous hope that it’ll erase away, followed by more swearing and finally a hollow acceptance than the darn thing is really cracked.

But, as the great philosophers always say (at least some of them), everything in life is a learning experience and so it was with this. Cracked windshields are, for the most part, covered by insurance (depending on your State & your insurance). So, a quick call to our agent followed by a chat with a windshield repair facility (Safelite came highly recommended on the RV forums) sent a man out to our State Park site the next day.

The repair people either fill the crack with a resin or they have to replace the whole windshield. In spite of the initial gloomy comment, Montie was a man of persistence and decided to try the resin even though cracks longer than a dollar bill usually don’t take them. We were ridiculously lucky and ours took…sort of. We’ve got a small bit at the end which may or may not hold, but we’re willing to take the chance instead of a full replacement (which our deductible would have us pay out-of-pocket).

Also Montie, as it turns out, is a 5-star man and wouldn’t accept payment since he couldn’t guarantee the crack would stick. He’s also a local and we chatted about the State Park, fishing and his band Broken Road (go check them out in Cheyenne at Little America if you’re in the area). So, if you find yourselves in the same situation as us do not fret…Safelite and Montie are here to save the day.

More on windshield repair in this excellent post:
http://rv-roadtrips.thefuntimesguide.com/2010/01/rv_windshield_glass.php

The foot-long crack that won't erase away. My finger is in the middle of the crack.

Safelite at our site in Curt Gowdy

Montie works his magic on the windshield