Post-apocalyptic Wyoming

We took Seba up to Douglas, Wyoming for a weekend Rotary exchange student convocation, and we planned to stay in town at a city park that allows campers: https://www.wyomingtourism.org/things-to-do/detail/River-Side-Park/8542. It's free and when we stopped by, there was no one there. It's right on the river, so it seemed as though it wouldn't be a bad place to stay.

However, on the way up, we passed two state parks and we just had to check them out. Glendo State Park and Guernsey State Park are both between Laramie and Douglas. We high tailed it out of Douglas after dropping off the exchange student, and made it back to Glendo in time to find a spot before it became totally dark. Since it was before the May 15th start of the official season, and because there was a prediction of heavy rain, we had one of the many campgrounds completely to ourselves. And what a beautiful spot it was -- out on a peninsula with water on three sides and no neighbors. Who could ask for more!

There were no hookups at this site, although there are hookups at another campground in the park. So this was our first dry camping experience. The heater worked fine, the lights worked great off the battery, and all seemed wonderful. Until dinner. I discovered I didn't have the pans I needed, and the one frying pan I had was too big to allow another pan on the stove. And the microwave wouldn't work off the battery. Note to self -- change out pans! We still had a great dinner and enjoyed the peace and quiet.

In the morning, we discovered the real reason we need a generator. No coffee! It didn't occur to us that even if the lights worked off the battery, the plugs wouldn't. So plugging in the coffee pot did no good. Fortunately, there's a great little local restaurant in the town of Glendo (pop. 230), and the coffee was quite good.

We spent the day exploring Guernsey State Park, which has a beautiful building constructed by the CCC workers...

...and drop dead scenery!

This is where the post-apocalyptic part comes in. We spent an entire day in a beautiful state park, and we saw NO ONE! It was a very eerie feeling, and it truly made us wonder if something had happened out in the real world that we didn't know about. Our cell phones weren't working, so we couldn't even check. We felt as though we had two gigantic state parks entirely to ourselves.

We also visited Fort Laramie,

and saw the ruts formed by the carriages traveling the Oregon Trail.

It was a very special day, and when we got back to Glendo, we sat outside at the picnic table with wine, cheese, and an amazing view. We watched the wind pick up and blow across the lake, so we had warning before the driving rain began to fall.

This first dry camping experience made it clear that we needed a few things for the trailer. #1 -- a generator! After research when we returned home, we purchased a Yamaha EF2400iSHC Portable Generator.  It started up immediately (once we added gas and oil, of course), and when tested with the air conditioner and the microwave in the trailer, it performed beautifully. We are looking forward to being able to have the luxuries of coffee, comfort, and cooking when we boondock in the future!

Another thing that we very clearly needed was a better spice storage arrangement. I was surprised at how few wall mounted spice racks there are that would work in a trailer. I definitely don't want to take up cabinet space, and a box under the seat was incredibly inconvenient. I like to cook, and I use a lot of spices, so this is a necessity. We finally found something that would work in our small space. It's a wall mounted cabinet with chicken wire that holds the items in. We rigged up a loop to keep it closed during travel.

Since our appliances are black, it blends in quite nicely. Boxes of tea in front of the spices fit perfectly and will keep the spices from moving around while we are in transit. Now that I've got this and have also got the right pans moved out to the trailer, I'm looking forward to being able to cook a nice meal. I'd say this is a much better use of the space meant for a wall mounted TV. I mean, really, we're camping -- bring a book!