On day two of our adventures in Wyoming, a Friday, we woke up early expecting to see snow on the ground. We had been told it was overdue. We had been told it was in the forecast. And when we came back to the cabin after dinner on Thursday evening, light rain was coming down as a kind of slush and temperatures had dropped into the low thirties. A part of me expected blizzard.
Though a thin film of ice coated the puddle outside our front door on Friday morning, there was no snow on the plains. In the predawn light we could see snow in the Medicine Bow Range to the west and on the Laramie Mountains to the east, but not on the flat lands between.
The sky was still largely overcast except for a slight gap along the eastern horizon. So as the sun came up we had a brief opportunity -- five minutes or so -- to take pictures.
After breakfast we headed east. Our plan was to visit the two churches my grandfather Nordstrom had pastored and to stop at several spots along the way that my family had frequented when I was very young. Time permitting, we would drive into Cheyenne either coming or going. My father had lived in Cheyenne most of his years until he graduated high school. My own solitary memory of Cheyenne was attending Frontier Days with my grandmother in July, once upon a time, although the exact year or my precise age is now beyond recall.
We took I-80 around Laramie and then after a drive through that the Laramie Mountains to the east we headed for Cheyenne. In the pre-Interstate era, those dark days of two-lane travel, the highway went through every town along its main street, which is why they are often called Main Street. In Laramie, the main street is called Grand Avenue.
When we traveled to visit my Nordstrom grandparents at their last church in Golden Prairie, driving through Cheyenne slowed the trip considerably. I have vague recollections of stopping along a night darkened street at a particular store so that my father could buy various kinds of popcorn as a treat. It is the popcorn, especially the caramel popcorn, that I remember, not the town. On drives like that my parents would sing together.
On one occasion I recall my parents having a sudden, hushed conversation about a sign they had seen in a store window that apparently said that Indians were not welcome. I cannot be certain about more details from that distant evening, but the fact that the sign created such immediate and deep concern for my parents made an impression on me that has not diminished. This would have been, perhaps, 1953 or 54, when I was four or five.
It had not snowed at the ranch, but it had snowed in the Laramie Mountains overnight. I estimated 3 or 4 inches where the wind had not swept it away. Temperatures recorded on the car thermometer dropped from 39 near Laramie to 33 as we reached the summit. The sky to the west and north was very dark and the wind was blowing. To the south was clear sky.
The Ames brothers, Oliver and Oaks, like many industrialists, especially from the 19th Century, were heroes to some and villains to others. While the brief accounts I have read all tell pretty much the same facts, the story is pretty much that the triumph of the transcontinental railroad was offset by the greed, corruption, and influence peddling that brought it into being.
A railroad town called Sherman was built near this spot; but when the railroad was rerouted several miles to the south in 1901, the town disappeared. Today the monument just seems to rise from the ground out in the middle of nowhere, fitting perhaps for the Ames brothers. A telling footnote here: the plaques atop the monument intended to honor the brothers offer relief busts of Oliver and Oaks on opposite sides; in both cases, from what I could see, the noses have been shot off.
I remember the Ames Monument from childhood. We had stopped there on occasion although I cannot imagine why. Apart from its historic importance, which is fairly singular and would have been lost on small boys, all I remember is squinting for family pictures on the sunny side of the monument.
Stefan and I did a little picture taking as the pyramid is such a distinctive feature in this winter-bleak landscape.
A short distance away, on the other side of I-80 is a better spot for little boys, more fun and more memorable. Vedauwoo is an area of rock formations that offers incredible possibilities for climbing and exploring.
But as the weather was discouraging and we had planned to head toward the Nebraska border to see if we could find my grandfather's churches, we decided to catch Vedauwoo on the return trip. We got in the car and headed east.
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