The night of October 1, we stayed in a rustic campground (though it had full hookups) just outside of Dubois, Wyoming. The name of the campground is ‘Solitude’. They have no problem with light pollution there, that’s for sure! It was so dark, we had a difficult time determining where the parking spaces were. There was no office anywhere. But we figured we could easily enough contact someone the next day to find out how much we owed. We’ve done just that plenty of times on our camping trips, often on instruction from the owners themselves.
It was 38° that night as Larry backed the camper into a space, and I walked to and fro with the flashlight. It had snowed in the mountains earlier that day.
These are the views from our front door at the campground Sunday morning. Larry awoke me early to come outside and see the sun coming over the mountains.
I was leaning down to get a close-up of this little alpine gold daisy when suddenly a large boot smashed right down on top of the poor thing. My ears flew straight up just like Snoopy’s do when the neighbor cat slashes his doghouse to ribbons.
Larry, who’d been walking beside me but looking off at a distant mountain covered with bright new snow, hadn’t noticed me stopping to take a picture, and he certainly hadn’t noticed this tiny little plant with a handful of wee yellow blossoms.
I howled.
Larry jumped, backed up, and stared down at the smooshed thing with a bit of chagrin. Then he leaned down and fluffed at it with fingertips larger than each individual flowers.
I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.
I took a picture of the flowers, and they looked remarkably healthy.
An hour later, I happened to take another look at the little plant, and all the little stems were holding their teeny blooms straight up, the blossoms opening wide to the sun, as if nothing untoward had ever happened. They have to be hardy, way up here in the mountains!
It had gotten down to 31° overnight, and there was frost on all the plants and ground cover. But the sun had not been up long before the temperature had made it up to 45°, melting all the sparkling frost crystals.
Later, I watched a big raven strolling about. They’re so much bigger than our crows, and have such deep voices. Least chipmunks dashed around all over the place, chittering at each other and stuffing their cheeks chock-full, doubtless to carry back to their winter larder somewhere, hidden deep in the rocks and red dirt. Cute little things, they are. Mountain bluebirds chirped and warbled and bobbed about.
Then a flock of about 20 bluebirds flew over, twittering as they went – but twitters usually mean birds are fussing. And indeed a couple were pecking at each other as they flew. Whataya bet one didn’t use his turn signal, and his wife was reading him the riot act?
There are only 19 spots for campers in the campground, though it spans many acres up the side of the mountain. They are planning to add more spaces and a few more amenities to the park. There were only about three other campers there. As we were leaving, an elderly man came driving along in a pickup, and then stopped and checked on something, his actions making us think he might be a good person to ask about the price, and how we should pay.
We guessed right. He was the owner, William ‘Bill’ Meckem.
There’s even a street in Dubois named ‘Meckem Street’. A friendly man, he told us to call his manager, who could explain how to pay online or accept our money personally. He tried calling him for us, but got no answer. After a little chat, we headed off.
Larry called the number, and left a voice message. We were halfway through town when the manager returned the call. I answered Larry’s phone.
And then this person proceeded to act like we were common criminals trying to break into the bank and make off with the safe. He could not understand why we had not called and gotten reservations ahead of time. He gasped loudly when I said we had already left the campground. He said he would meet us in town, so I gave him our location, and told him where we would stop. He said he would be there in a couple of minutes, and added, among other things, “You should have called!” He probably wouldn’t have liked that any better, since it was around 10:00 p.m. when we had pulled into the campground.
It turned out, the man is also the town’s deputy sheriff. Judging from his self-importance, he probably owns the Bubble Gum Factory, too. And the Shoelace Outlet, for good measure.
Mr. Whozit found us in the empty church parking lot. We had already buried the bank vault. Just let him try to find it, haha, hoo-hoo!
He raked Larry over the coals for not getting a reservation ahead of time. It didn’t even make a lick of difference that we had met and chatted with the owner of the campground! Larry was his usual friendly self, in return. He handed over $50 in cash (what does it matter, how much he tells us our parking spot was worth, when we swiped said cash out of the local till?), and off we went.
In 15 short minutes, we had changed our tune from, “Let’s come back to this pretty campground someday!” to “Let’s never set foot in that place again!”
Maybe that’s a gallows up there on that rocky cliff above the Twin Pine Lodge!
We left Barney Fife to enforce the roolz in his small burg and headed for Grand Teton National Park.
It was 38° that night as Larry backed the camper into a space, and I walked to and fro with the flashlight. It had snowed in the mountains earlier that day.
These are the views from our front door at the campground Sunday morning. Larry awoke me early to come outside and see the sun coming over the mountains.
I was leaning down to get a close-up of this little alpine gold daisy when suddenly a large boot smashed right down on top of the poor thing. My ears flew straight up just like Snoopy’s do when the neighbor cat slashes his doghouse to ribbons.
Larry, who’d been walking beside me but looking off at a distant mountain covered with bright new snow, hadn’t noticed me stopping to take a picture, and he certainly hadn’t noticed this tiny little plant with a handful of wee yellow blossoms.
I howled.
Larry jumped, backed up, and stared down at the smooshed thing with a bit of chagrin. Then he leaned down and fluffed at it with fingertips larger than each individual flowers.
I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.
I took a picture of the flowers, and they looked remarkably healthy.
An hour later, I happened to take another look at the little plant, and all the little stems were holding their teeny blooms straight up, the blossoms opening wide to the sun, as if nothing untoward had ever happened. They have to be hardy, way up here in the mountains!
It had gotten down to 31° overnight, and there was frost on all the plants and ground cover. But the sun had not been up long before the temperature had made it up to 45°, melting all the sparkling frost crystals.
Later, I watched a big raven strolling about. They’re so much bigger than our crows, and have such deep voices. Least chipmunks dashed around all over the place, chittering at each other and stuffing their cheeks chock-full, doubtless to carry back to their winter larder somewhere, hidden deep in the rocks and red dirt. Cute little things, they are. Mountain bluebirds chirped and warbled and bobbed about.
Then a flock of about 20 bluebirds flew over, twittering as they went – but twitters usually mean birds are fussing. And indeed a couple were pecking at each other as they flew. Whataya bet one didn’t use his turn signal, and his wife was reading him the riot act?
There are only 19 spots for campers in the campground, though it spans many acres up the side of the mountain. They are planning to add more spaces and a few more amenities to the park. There were only about three other campers there. As we were leaving, an elderly man came driving along in a pickup, and then stopped and checked on something, his actions making us think he might be a good person to ask about the price, and how we should pay.
We guessed right. He was the owner, William ‘Bill’ Meckem.
There’s even a street in Dubois named ‘Meckem Street’. A friendly man, he told us to call his manager, who could explain how to pay online or accept our money personally. He tried calling him for us, but got no answer. After a little chat, we headed off.
Larry called the number, and left a voice message. We were halfway through town when the manager returned the call. I answered Larry’s phone.
And then this person proceeded to act like we were common criminals trying to break into the bank and make off with the safe. He could not understand why we had not called and gotten reservations ahead of time. He gasped loudly when I said we had already left the campground. He said he would meet us in town, so I gave him our location, and told him where we would stop. He said he would be there in a couple of minutes, and added, among other things, “You should have called!” He probably wouldn’t have liked that any better, since it was around 10:00 p.m. when we had pulled into the campground.
It turned out, the man is also the town’s deputy sheriff. Judging from his self-importance, he probably owns the Bubble Gum Factory, too. And the Shoelace Outlet, for good measure.
Mr. Whozit found us in the empty church parking lot. We had already buried the bank vault. Just let him try to find it, haha, hoo-hoo!
He raked Larry over the coals for not getting a reservation ahead of time. It didn’t even make a lick of difference that we had met and chatted with the owner of the campground! Larry was his usual friendly self, in return. He handed over $50 in cash (what does it matter, how much he tells us our parking spot was worth, when we swiped said cash out of the local till?), and off we went.
In 15 short minutes, we had changed our tune from, “Let’s come back to this pretty campground someday!” to “Let’s never set foot in that place again!”
Maybe that’s a gallows up there on that rocky cliff above the Twin Pine Lodge!
We left Barney Fife to enforce the roolz in his small burg and headed for Grand Teton National Park.
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