To an East Coaster from the megalopolis that spans Washington, D.C., to Boston, Hillsdale seems like the middle of nowhere. But, when driving through Wyoming, nowhere takes on a whole new meaning.
To an East Coaster from the megalopolis that spans Washington, D.C., to Boston, Hillsdale seems like the middle of nowhere. But, when driving through Wyoming, nowhere takes on a whole new meaning.
This spring break, sophomore Thomas Potter and I drove through other Hillsdales in Illinois and Wyoming to stay in Lander, Wyoming — even going as far west as the Grand Tetons and Idaho.
Driving to Wyoming from here is no joke. Heading south to I-80 and driving roughly 1,100 miles west puts you about 100 miles south of Lander. Heading up to Lander from there and completing this trip without stops would take about 21.5 hours.
We did stop, of course, first in Chicago and again in Nebraska, doing the same on the way back. That helped a lot — not to mention the monetary help we got from the gas mileage of a Toyota Prius.
On the last leg of our westward trip, we began in Lincoln and went west. Nebraska is full of farmland for three things: corn, cows, and soybeans. To a suburban city-slicker, that’s not much to see. But as Nebraska turns into Wyoming, those farms become scarce and ranches become the primary use of land.
Once you enter Wyoming, the ranches technically continue, but all that can be seen is endless plains of grass with fences along the road that presumably mark property. Eventually the mountains of Colorado become visible while passing Hillsdale, Wyoming, and soon enough mountains were rising around the road.
Through Laramie, the highest “major” city in Wyoming, with a 7,200-foot elevation, the air inside our bag of Doritos expanded from the decrease in air pressure, caused by the thinner atmosphere at the higher elevation, making the bag puff up. And after heading west, we saw Sinclair, a town built around an oil refinery that looked like an evil lair from a Hayao Miyazaki movie.
As we drove up to Lander off the interstate and onto a local highway, I learned that anytime a minor highway intersects with another, they call that a “junction” and there is a “town” there. A town that often consists of less than five houses. These junctions rarely come up, as so few roads connect to anything in Wyoming.
Once we reached Lander, we could see Wyoming’s 13th largest city at 7,600 by population — roughly 400 less than Hillsdale. We found out that Cheyenne, the capital, is the largest city at around 65,000, roughly twice as large as Jackson, Michigan.
From Lander, we went on hikes in the Wind River range and drove over to the Grand Tetons. The Tetons are the most striking mountains I have ever seen. Driving toward them from the east, one must pass through the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where moose abide and the continent’s watershed divides.
A few miles past that 9,000-foot continental divide, the car gripped the road around a turn up a hill, and threading between 4-foot snowbanks, turned to face the Teton range, still dominating the horizon more than 50 miles away. I’m not exactly sure what the French explorers meant when they named them, but “grand” is certainly a good word. Albert Bierstadt could capture that in his paintings, but I could not, in my pictures, do the range justice.
We hiked the only available hike in that National Park — it’s still the offseason — and drove through the Teton pass to Idaho for good measure.
Having hiked around Lander and visited family on previous days, we took the last night to go “night repelling,” a cult favorite activity among Wyoming Catholic College students.
With only one phone and no flashlights between Thomas, myself, his sister and her husband, our main company was the full moon lighting up the rock face.
After finishing that horizontal walk down the canyon cliff, I found myself alone. Thomas had gone down before me but I couldn’t find him. (I later found out he unsuccessfully tried to find his way back to the top.)
Alone in the moonlight, I tried not to look at the shapes in the woods and think about something else. It’s not just the emptiness that makes Wyoming interesting, but the barrenness. You can drive for dozens of miles without seeing a house, a tree, or even a non-grass plant.
Miles of rocks and grass in the plains and the same tree over and over again in the mountains. What makes it so beautiful then? It’s huge. Bigger rocks, bigger plains, bigger mountains, bigger everything.
Encountering the expansive nothing of the plains set against the all encompassing nothing of the mountains forces you into a world of extremes. Facing extremes requires new thought. So go visit Wyoming, because with nothing to distract you and nothing to inspire you, you can come to see anything.
If you haven’t seen it, it is worth spending half of spring break driving to.
