A Basque wagon is pulled by an antique truck during the Basque Festival in Buffalo, Wyoming.
Buffalo, Wyoming, is a charming town with murals depicting its history.
A Basque wagon is pulled by horses during the Basque Festival in Buffalo, Wyoming.
A cowboy tests a rope on a fake bull at King’s Saddlery in Sheridan, Wyoming.
anchored by the elegant brick walled Occidental Hotel. We wandered inside through the classic Western bar to the antique-filled lobby of this historic hotel, gazing in wonder at the images on the walls of the many celebrity guests from long ago that stayed in the rooms upstairs. From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Ernest Hemingway to Buffalo Bill Cody, this unique hotel has hosted both the famous and the infamous. A small plaque explained that the hotel had started as a simple shared creek-side campsite in 1878. It has been thriving ever since. The Occidental Hotel is perched on the banks of Clear Creek, and visitors can purchase a handful of fish food from a dispenser to throw into the water from the bridge. Our mouths dropped open when a young boy on the bridge reeled in a big fish and showed it off to us. A few steps away, Crazy Woman Square is flanked by huge murals on the surrounding brick buildings that depict cattle ranching life in Johnson Canyon throughout the years. A bronze sculpture of sheep celebrates the Basque history. Cattle ranching is still a big part of life around the Bighorns, and we had to smile when we literally bumped into it while driving on US Highway 16 one morning. There isn't much traffic in this area, but there were
suddenly quite a few brake lights ahead of us. We stopped and inched along for a while and then suddenly heard an incessant mooing as we rounded a bend. A few hundred cows and calves were slowly making their way up the middle of the highway toward a turn-off to new grazing areas. In keeping with ranching traditions, the cowboys driving the herd were on horseback and wore cowboy boots, and a few wore cowboy hats, too. But modern conveniences won out when it came to communication between the cowboy at the front of the herd and the cowboy at the back behind the mooing bovines: each rancher held the reins of his horse in one hand and a cell phone up to his ear in the other. One day we took our truck down rugged Forest Road 33 off US Highway 16 to head into the depths of Crazy Woman Canyon. As we drove through the gorge, jagged canyon walls rose high above us on either side, closing off the rest of the world behind sheer stone cliffs. Ice cold Crazy Woman Creek trickled alongside us. There are several different legends about how this canyon got its name, most involving murder and some involving revenge, but regardless who the Crazy Woman was and what made her lose her mind, there's no doubt she must have felt an overpowering sense of solitude in this austere and isolated place.
MOUNTAIN HIGHS AND LOWS
COAST TO COAST SUMMER MAGAZINE 2019
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