2023 Wind River Day 7: 7/23/23

 Another travel day today. Back on the road headed east again. I had a terrible running workout, thinking I could do a longer speed workout after all the hiking and running I've been doing the last 7 days. Needless to say, it went terrible. I hung in there for ~75% of the volume, but at a much slower pace before pulling the plug. 

We went to the another bakery in Lander after I tried one yesterday before leaving town. A good sweet roll, if not cardamom like advertised. 

Much of the first ~3 hours of the car ride was running the high plains to Casper. Not much between the Wind River corridor and there. I don't even know if we passed a proper town. Always pretty amazing to drive through and truly understand the vastness of the interior/high plains.

We admittedly just drove the outskirts of Casper, so maybe they have a nice downtown and neighborhoods, but it seems like kind of a crummy town. Sprawled out, centered around the car, existing because of oil.

Zig Zagged down I-25 a little before cutting across again on back highways (US 18 in this case). "Lusk" was a bit of an outpost, before another massive stretch without services. Something like 90 miles before there was a gas station, food, etc. Pretty crazy.

The temps also became quickly atrocious outside. Our car read 100 by mid-afternoon. Can't imagine how the cattle (or any other living thing for that matter) feel when they are out there under the beating sun without and pray of shade for the entirety of the day.

Soon enough, we crossed over the state line and the Black Hills rose before us once again. It was a good last ~40 minute drive from Edgemont to Custer State Park where we were staying for the night. The black hills maybe don't have quite the elevation of the Rockies, but they are still gorgeous in their own right.

I ended up messing up the camping reservation. I thought I had booked for Legion Lake, right across the street from Legion Lake, but I must have gotten kicked over to a different campground as I booked it. 

We got Dash out for a swim in the lake before heading 12 min down the road to Blue Bells campground, which was nice, if not on water. They were out of firewood at the store, but I collected enough downed wood from the woods to make a fire to cook a dinner of brats, baked beans, and veggies wrapped in tinfoil, followed by smores for dessert. Another great camp meal to cap off the day.

2023 Wind River Day 6: 7/22/23

Another day out in the Rockies. Up for a run again. With Kate for the first bit, then solo. Picked our side of town, which is hillier, but kept the pace easy and it was a nice run.

I used “Alltrails” online to find another good hiking trail at the top of the Canyon maybe a 30 min drive away. When I had planned this trip, I envisioned doing at least one “summit” but it seems like a lot of the large peaks in the Wind River Range are hard to get to. Mainly accessed through backpacking. I suppose that’s part of the cool thing of the Wind River range: it’s a lot of designated wilderness area.

The hike was a ~9ish mile out and back through mainly pine forest with occasional scrub meadows. The designation was a set of two reservoirs that honestly looked like mountain lakes if you didn’t know they were man made. This made for easy trails; only a slight incline on the way out, but also good for Dash. I think he got to swim 5 times on the hike.

The first lake was maybe only a 30 minute hike too, and then we ran along that for a while before cutting along a stream to the next lake. We saw a decent number of trail runners, but the largest user of the trails were mountain bikers. These we saw once every 10-15 minutes or so. Lander must have a large percentage of their community that is into outdoor activities. At only 7300 people or so, it sure seems like a lot of people are out utilizing the vast trail network right out their back door. That’s why you’d live there, I suppose.

We both dunked in as well at the 2nd lake (very chilly) and soaked in the views of snow capped peaks in the distance over lunch. My legs were pretty heavy with a run + the hike, but the trek back was easy enough.

Dinner was at the Italian Restaurant in town. It was definitely a bit pricy, but also had huge portions and good drinks. The food was well done as well. Kate had a Clam Linguine and I had a chicken-bacon Gnocchi. I could barely finish my plate, which is saying something. Kate wasn’t able to finish hers.

Downtown is only a ~5 min walk from our Airbnb, which was definitely a plus when I booked it. It’s nice to leave once for the day via car for the hike and then not have to get back in the car again for the day.

I wouldn’t say either hike we did was out of this world amazing, but it’s good hiking in the area and a cool town to explore. Nice to stay in Lander.

2023 Wind River Day 5: 7/21/23

Slept in a bit this morning and went for a run on what was supposed to be a flat route for a 9 miler. It was on a road north of town paralleling the river through pastures with great views of the mountains. Most of this ended up true, but I missed my turn (should have memorized the road name) and it ended up being 12 with a 2 mile stretch on the highway. Not the worst, but I was certainly dragging by mile 10.

We ate an early lunch at the Airbnb and then drove 15 minutes up to Sinks Canyon State Park. Here, a branch of the Popo Agie mysteriously disappears into the rocks, appearing a half mile downstream. They still haven't confirmed exactly the path the water takes, but additive dyes confirmed that it takes something like 2 hours to cover that distance. Pretty cool to check out.

We picked the most popular hike in Lander; a 3ish mile hike out and back to the waterfalls farther upstream. There were definitely people on the trail, but only a fraction of what we would consider "busy" trails from other hiking areas. 

Dash was with and while he's done some hiking with us, honestly not a ton, and while it's comparable to walking it was still a fair amount of training to get him to move in ways we wanted him to when navigating rocky stretches, steep inclines, etc. He did pretty well overall though and loved soaking in the pools of the falls. 

Supposedly, at the very top, people treat a section as a water slide. We did not see this, so we must have missed it, but it was still a great mountain hike.

Dinner was down at the Lander Brewpub, which is adjoined with the "Cowfish" restaurant downtown. They had 6 beers on tap, a couple of which we had tried the night before and another I tried with dinner. Good, if not great beer. Burgers for dinner; when in Wyoming, this is a good play. With that said, they had a solid menu and we had a great arugula side salad as well. But these are never guarantees west of the Mississippi. 

Another good day out in the mountains. 

2023 Wind River Day 4: 7/20/23

Sunrise over the Bighorns 

Ten Sleep brewing

 The team broke camp at 5:00 AM this morning, so we didn't have much of a choice but to follow suit. We waited it out a little, but had everything in the car at swung by the drive-thru coffee shop a couple blocks away to pick up some morning Jo.

Rather than head to the park to have breakfast, I figured we'd just drive up into the Bighorns a bit and find a nice view. It was a travel day today of sorts, but we had a little less than 4 hours to get to Lander and lots of time to do so. 

After about 15 minutes out of town, we found a gravel road with an awesome 360 degree view of the mountains right off the highway that we pulled off and had our granola/bananas along with our coffee. It was an absolutely stunning view to see the sun rising over the plains to the east.

We drove another ~45 minutes to the Tensleep Lake road for a run. It wasn't exactly what I envisioned for speed work, but we knew it was long after driving it 5 years ago and had access to water and plenty of trails right next to the side of the road for one of us to hang out with Dash while the other was running. I did 6 miles up hill and 6 miles down, attempting to do speed work that ranged from slow, but reasonable pace, to laughably slow. Even the way back wasn't crazy fast because it was gravel and the grade was pretty steep in spots. Still put in some good work for the day though.

Kate staggered her run a little behind mine to limit the time Dash was in the car. When I got back, I then took him for a walk while she ran. She pitched her speed for the day and opted for a trail run along the creek, which was a sweet trail.

The drive down the Ten Sleep Canyon was just as amazing as 5 years ago when we last drove it. Huge sheer rock walls rise above the road. Great scenery.

We had putzed around enough to start the day, that lunched time out well for a return to the Ten Sleep Brewery just outside of town. We had lunch supplies and got a flight to drink. I wasn't exactly in the beer drinking mood post workout, but it was nice to be back here as well. We were also here 5 years ago and the views from their patio are also great.

Pit-stopped in Thermopolis for some ice cream at their local walk up ice cream place. I think every town out here has at least one or two. I know I harped on this a little yesterday, but in the window were two signs. One said "powered by Coffee and God". The other was for "Christian designed" apparel from Central Wyoming. 

There were four models on the poster. Two of them were black. To me, this just feels like blatant false advertising. Wyoming has the lowest proportional population of blacks in the union (thanks Wikipedia). Quick math would indicate there are a grand total of ~4600 in the state. If these models were from Thermopolis, they would constitute 25% of the African American population in town. 

As I continued to think about it though (it was a long wait for ice cream), I reconsidered. Maybe if you are black and live in Wyoming, you ARE crazy religious. That would explain why you'd choose to live there in the first place. Getting back into the car, we actually saw one of the (presumably) 8 black residents of Thermopolis walking down the sidewalk. What an interesting conversation it would be to get their life story of how they ended up in Central Wyoming.

Our place in Lander is right in town. Lander seems sweet. It's fairly lush by Wyoming standards, thanks to the water from the Popo Agie River. There's no college here, so the community they've built has been organically grown, which is pretty cool.

For dinner, we walked a few blocks to the city park where they had concerts in the park and food trucks all summer long. We were a little late to the show, so a lot of the food trucks were out of a lot of menu items, but we ended up with a burrito, tacos, and some chips and guac and took in the show. 

Looking forward to some good mountain hiking the next couple days.

2023 Wind River Day 3: 7/19/23

 

Up early today for a run with the team. They were leaving at 7, so it was 6:30 wake up, then a cup of coffee at the "Y" before heading out on the river path in town. Luckily- they had just had their big workout yesterday so our top dog, Landen, was on a recovery run. He's a 15:40 5k guy, so he could grind me pretty good on a training run if he wanted to. The river path in town has a couple miles of nice, flat(ish) gravel along the river, before cutting across a field, running through the Veteran's home area, and onto a bike path by the side of US 16 before cutting back onto a dirt path by the river. We made it maybe a half mile on that part of the path before flipping it and heading back. Kate reported that that stretch of trail was some of the nicest on her 10 mile run. We only went 9 and thus missed out on the fun. Nadir Yusuf was also out for the camp. He's a Willmar grad from ~8 years back and an outstanding distance runner. He debuted in the marathon at Grandma's this spring with a 2:15. Pretty cool to talk to him and get an insight of his training in the build up.

Post run, I was on Dash duty for a while while Kate ran. The team headed up for a hike to a fire tower, we headed over to Lake de Smet (reservoir) for a swim and a picnic lunch. It was a great beach for swimming. Really sandy and not a ton of people; very Dash friendly.

After returning, we met up for the team for their brief (~15 min) pool workout, followed by their annual balloon toss competition. Basically, they partner up and then ~36 groups face off with seeing who can throw it the farthest without breaking the balloon. I ended up getting wrangled in as well to pair up an unpaired runner. We weren't the first out, but it certainly wasn't pretty.

Dinner was pizza, although Kate and I picked up a ready-made salad as well from the grocery store.

Dessert was night #2 at the Lickity Splits ice cream shop down. Behind us in line was a Wyoming Grandmother talking to her Grandson. I can't remember exactly what the topic was, but the quote that stuck with me from the Grandma imparting social lessons on the boy: "If it's between being right and being kind, always choose kind." Much of my feeling is admittedly based on preconceived notions and biases, but I would still argue that this overarching attitude falsely dominates much of the great plains/mountain west states. I've heard multiple people talk about how Minnesota nice is fake (and it can be), but South Dakota people are genuinely really nice. We've certainly had good experiences with locals all over the West, but I can never shake the reality that these states overwhelming voted for Trump (Wyoming was 72%, I think) and a specific brand of Christianity or Mormons dominate the culture. 

Nice is easy when everyone looks the same as you, has a similar financial situation as you, has a similar religion as you, etc. It gets a lot harder to be nice when complications like inequality and diversity come into play. Then being nice over being right isn't necessarily actually being nice in the end. It's also just straight up hard to believe that anyone who willingly votes for Trump twice has any interest in truly being nice. But I suppose that's my world view based on my upbringing and life.

Post dinner- we walked over to the Middle School where they had a google meet set up with former Willmar runner turned pro: Jessa Hanson. She had a cool story of her journey in running and it was great for the athletes be able to hear about training, nutrition, mental health, etc, especially I think, our female athletes to have a role model of this caliber speaking with them. 

I don't know if this is good or bad, but listening to her talk about all these things, it again reinforced that everything I've learned and most things I'm doing after 24 years of running are the "right" things. The training philosophy is there, recovery, nutrition. At the end of the day, you can do all the right things and this is how far my body will take me. Genetics just takes some people farther. Again, whether good or bad to have this realization is debatable, but definitely one that Nick and I have talked about whenever we come across "elite" (whatever that means) runners and hear their stories.

Vacation time is precious, so I don't know if I'd want to make a yearly endeavor to go to Wyoming, but it was cool to see the routine that is referenced so much throughout the season and means so much to our athletes. I could definitely see coming back in the future for the extent of the trip, especially without having to juggle Dash, which made participating in all the activities more challenging.

2023 Wind River Day 2 7/18/23

 

Sunset over the Bighorns from camp. I failed to take a picture of the encampment.

Downtown Buffalo. A block away from the ice cream store that is frequented by many of the athletes 1-2 times per day.

Up for a run at the Spearfish River campground before heading out for the day. It's a bit tricky with the dog + camping to have both of us running; one that is constantly in need of management. Kate ended up doing a short run with Dash, with more coming in the afternoon. I ended up doing my main run in the morning. There's a nice trail that parallels the creek through town, and the Spearfish Canyon road is a steady incline, but gorgeous. Did a mixture of these two to round out the run. The Badlands aside, the Black Hills are the first "real" West in my opinion. Such a different landscape than anything we can find in the Midwest.

     It was a leisurely depart for the day after the run. We found a coffee shop/bakery (Ruby's Roast) downtown that was solid and ate outside before heading west again.

     The drive from Spearfish to Buffalo isn't crazy long, but still long enough. I downloaded Matthew Mcconaughey's memoir on tape, so we spent a fair amount of time listening to that to pass the time as the arid high plains rolled by. Large stretches of this stretch of 90 have little to no exits/towns. Just endless scrub and buttes. 

    Got into Buffalo in the early afternoon and ate some lunch from Subway before meeting up with the team. They camp out every year (Harris has been doing it for 31 years) at the YMCA in town. It's a good setup. They have 24 hour access to the "Y", with bathrooms, showers, a pool, and a gym. It's right across the street from a large city park with multiple picnic shelters and a huge municipal pool.

     We set up our tent of the edge of the collection. Kate got an afternoon run in and we spent the rest of the bit wandering around town exploring.

     Dinner with the group (there's ~90 people from 3 different schools) was served at one of the picnic shelters. Fried chicken (catered) and watermelon. I have no idea how Harris coordinates feeding that many mouths with the other coaches. It's quite a production, although I suppose he has a lot of experience and plenty of formulas.

     It's again tricky to balance with Dash. He loves adults and generally has been okay with teens, but probably because there's so many, it overwhelmed him and he freaks out, not wanted to be petted. Reasonable enough, but certainly an added challenge when camping with 90 of them. Part of what made this trip work though, was bringing him with, so that comes with the territory.

     Tuesday evening, the kids had more free time, and then the Hopkins team met for ~20 minutes or so to wrap up the day/trip. They've been journaling their running each day (a great skill to build) and there was some good reflection prompts to what habits they'd bring back to MN and the rest of the season. It seems a no-brainer to me, but I forget sometimes that at age 16, many of them see their training in Wyoming as an accomplishment, and it is, but it certainly doesn't make our cross country season. The weeks to come thereafter do that. Such is the blessing and curse of distance running. Anyone can see massive improvements if they put in the time, but it's a measurement of weeks/months, not days or individual runs.

     Cool to finally get out here and see the tradition that Harris has built over the years.

2023 Wind River Day 1: 7/17/23

 7/17 Wind River Road trip

And just like that, we’re off again. Not exactly a quick start today as we wanted to run, but more importantly, the Impreza was still at the shop needing to be picked up. Not sure if it was a miscommunication when they contacted me Thursday or if they forgot Friday, but I spaced and then the only thing left to do was open them up Monday morning and pack the car thereafter.

We ended up rolling out around 8:50, which honestly isn’t horrible all things considered, but certainly isn’t great when your goal is the western edge of South Dakota for the day.

Pit-stopped in St. Peter for a River Rock stop, then continued the trek SW through Minnesota’s heartland. 60 has been continually built up to increase travel speed between the cities and I-90 West bound. A blessing and a curse, I’m sure, for the communities along the corridor. What was once probably 2-lane road in my life time is nearly 4 lane and frequently limited access for most of the route. I’m always amazed by how this corridor makes you appreciate how big Minnesota is too. We think of Mankato as “Southern” Minnesota. Then you drive on 60 for another couple hours before hitting Worthington in the southwest(ish) corner of the state.

Ate lunch at Palisades state park just across the border in SW. Typically, I’ve done Blue Mounds, but wanted to check this park out and it’s fairly close to the freeway. I believe it’s the same creek (Beaver Creek) that runs through Split Rock Creek state park near Pipestone and definitely the same quartzite that is prominent in the SW part of MN. The creek cuts right through it, which was pretty cool to hike along, even if only for 20 minutes or so. Dash got a little swimming in in the creek, which is also always a bonus. 

Departed to start cutting through South Dakota around 2 maybe and made pretty good time until Kimball MN, where we stopped for some Ice Cream. They have a walk up stand right off the freeway that had really good quality ice cream. Definitely a pick me up in the section of the state where there are woefully few options for services.

Chamberlain came up soon enough thereafter. This is definitely the informal gateway to the west on the 90 corridor. Cornfields and irrigation are quickly overrun by vast plains following the sweeping view of the Missouri River.

It’s amazing though how much of South Dakota remains post Chamberlain. Whatever progress you think you’ve made is gradually rubbed away mile after mile through the plains before you finally approach the Badlands.

We stopped in Rapid City quick to grab a couple dinner items we lacked in our fridge before finishing the last leg of the journey to Spearfish. We waffled a bit on going out to eat/staying in a motel or both with thunderstorms in the vicinity, but settled on cooking and camping when it looked like the storms were passing right as we approached town.

It was a good call. A good “hobo dinner” with some Prieve chuck steak and a nice camping spot right along the creek. It was a slog to get here, but nice that we made it. We still have some other big driving days ahead, but this was the largest one. Looking forward to seeing the mountains tomorrow.