Way back in the archaic year of 2001, I took a cross-county road trip with my best friend and his somewhat eccentric uncle. His uncle had talked up about how we were going to “rough it” out in the wilderness on this trip like real mountain men. He had idolized a mountaineer from the 1800’s named Jim Bridger and spoke often of this man who now seemed larger than life. My friend and I had packed up a tent, sleeping bags and all the trappings of camping gear. His uncle scoffed at our gear, stating that Jim Bridger wouldn’t have any such things and that all he would have had was a knife and a buffalo robe.
The first leg of the journey took us from Clarksville, Tennessee to Cheyenne, Wyoming which we wound up completing in about eighteen hours. We wound up staying that first night at Vedauwoo in the Medicine Bow – Routt National Forest. Just before we settled in for the night, my friend’s uncle declared he was going to head back into town for some provisions. This was around 11 at night and my buddy and I were like um, okay. He took off and left us alone out in the middle of nowhere. We crawled into the tent and zipped up into our sleeping bags and drifted off. We woke up around 1am and noticed his uncle still wasn’t back yet. My friend joked that if he wasn’t back by dawn, we were hiking back to Cheyenne and catching the first flight back home.
His uncle eventually showed back up with some groceries. He then proceeded to scoff at our sleeping bags once again and started waxing poetically about Jim Bridger. We shrugged our shoulders and went back to sleep, snug in our sleeping bags. Of course this bring up in the higher elevations, it got quite cold after about 3am. We woke up to the chattering sound of his uncle’s teeth as he damn near froze to death on an air mattress and cotton sheets. Needless to say, that was the only night we did any “roughing it”. We stayed in hotels on the rest of that trip.
We continued on through Wyoming and stopped in Cody for a bit, checking out a bar there that had saddles for barstools. We sampled a beer there that we had never heard of before as, at that time, was not available east of the Mississippi River. That beer which is now pretty much everywhere was Fat Tire. I kept a bottle of it for a souvenir which I still have on my shelf of collectibles to this day.
Our plan was to continue west to Yellowstone National Park, however due to wild fires in the area, the east entrance of the park was closed. We turned north and went up into Montana for a bit and back around and down into Wyoming to the north entrance of the park. While there we took in some of the sites like Old Faithful geyser and many of the numerous hot springs. We also pondered the sobering fact that we were essentially standing on top of an ancient dormant supervolcano.
After taking in all the sites at the park we headed on west into Idaho and then turned south, heading into Nevada. We traveled southwest, through Reno and eventually arrived at our destination of Lake Tahoe for the leg of our journey. We stayed for a night at the Cal-Neva Resort which as the name suggests, is right on the border of California and Nevada.
From there we ventured on into California as my friend’s uncle wanted to check out some nursery near Sacramento for a specific kind of tree he had been looking for. We were only roughly an hour and a half more or less from San Francisco and wanted to go there and check out the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately my friend’s uncle was completely opposed to the idea stating that we didn’t have time for that.
From there we headed back east through Nevada and into Utah. While passing through we stopped and took in the Bonneville Salt Flats and also saw the speedway there where there have been several land speed records set. Turning northward, we headed back to Wyoming an this began our journey back home.
All in all I would say this trip turned out to be quite a fun adventure. I do wish we had been able to do some more camping, but unfortunately one night was all the old Uncle could handle, despite carrying a torch for old Jim Bridger.