Also, don't forget, at the very bottom of this page I offer links to a number of retirement resources, including the Center for Retirement Research, The New Old Age, the Stanford Center on Longevity, and many more.
Anyway . . . back to the Oregon Trail. After the pioneers had traveled over the prairie for 30 or 40 days, they started looking for signposts that signaled they were making progress. We'd traveled a little more than 500 miles when we saw the first of them: Courthouse rock, along with its smaller companion Jailhouse rock.
A little farther down the road came the even more recognizable Chimney rock.
And then Scott's Bluff, below on the right. Mitchell Pass runs through Scott's Bluff and South Bluff, on the left.
We were able to drive up to the top of Scott's Bluff and walk around the summit. Just stay on the path, we were told, and watch out for rattlesnakes. We saw no rattlesnakes, but got a great view of Mitchell Pass from on high.
Little did we know that the Fort Laramie B&B is actually a 10,000-acre cattle ranch. We could have stayed in the teepee if we'd wanted . . .
But instead we chose the main building, with the bedroom in the back.
We experienced our first rainy day of the trip, and we sat around and read our books. After it cleared up the proprietor took us on a tour, explaining that around these parts a 10,000-acre ranch isn't really that big. You need at least 15,000 acres to run enough cattle to support a family.
Then the next day, as we looked at the view out our front door, we realized we needed to continue heading west . . .
10 comments:
Beautiful out that door. I can't imagine how it must have felt to see that and know you had to drag the wagon and family out there into that distance.
Hey! Hubs and I stayed there last July on our epic journey to Idaho. We DID opt to stay in the teepee on the hottest day of the year so far there, 103F. lolz
500 miles is a short hop by car, but imagine doing it by covered wagon! There have been so many movies made and books written, but it's impossible, I would think, to capture the exact mood and feelings of those travelers. That so many made it to begin a new life is a miracle.
Wow! I am enjoying your excursion and your descriptions. Just thinking about what it must have been like back then... :-)
Hi, Tom - I am enjoying exploring the Oregon Trail (virtually) through your posts. Last year, on the Camino Trail, Richard and I also had the chance to sleep in a Teepee at one of the locations. We too gave it a miss. Were you remotely tempted to sleep there?
It's true that traveling by car you only get a taste of what their experience must have really been like. But ... you do get a taste of it. And I would have done the teepee 20 years ago. But no longer.
It's nice to travel your way. Interesting journey so far.
Reading your post and some of the comments, I feel that someone has to take on the teepee challenge. I wonder who it will be?
Love the pictures. Can you even imagine what it must have been like in a wagon. If a bumpy hayride is anything similar I would have lasted from the front gate to the back gate only.
I wonder how the ranch owner would have felt about vegetarian guests. I had a friend who had a rancher relative who wrote a book about Oregon history that I had read, and I told my friend that next time she visited her relative, I would love to go, and she said that my vegetarianism would be a problem for people who made their living raising beef cattle. It's not that I would have talked about the evils of meat, but simply the fact that I would refuse to eat their meat.
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