July 9th

We got in pretty close to midnight last night with the gas gauge on E. We thought about getting gas but were tired enough we decided to go to bed and get it in the morning before we headed out. Too bad we forgot all about the gas until we were sitting in Alcova Wyoming watching a pair of osprey (I think) and trying to get a signal for our gps to show us the way to the Mormon Handcart site. Then all of a sudden I remembered we forgot to get gas. Rick face registered shock and he put the RV and gear and headed into town. For those of you who haven’t been to Alcova it is about 50 minutes out of Cody and 1 hour out of Rawlins. There isn’t really any town in between. Alcova boasts a population of 100 permanent residents. We hadn’t noticed a gas station on the way in – we were praying we just overlooked it. Luckily we had. We rolled in found out the gas was 3.95 a gallon. It was 3.40 in Cody where we were supposed to get gas, but since walking 50 miles with a gas can wasn’t worth saving $26 to us we just went ahead and filled up.

We stopped at Independence Rock for a quick look. Our quick look turned out to take a little over an hour. The kids ran off to run up the Rock. The scampered up it like little mountain goats. Rachel wanted me to go with her so I said sure – as we started I figured out pretty quickly I wasn’t making it up – way to steep for me. So we went back down. Rachel though went around where it was a little less steep and ran up – I decided I better follow her to make sure she could get up. We got up ok – sweating like a pig but ok. But one look down and I realized I would either have to live on top of that rock or find another way down. So we walked across it to where it looked a little more gradual. It took a while to make our way down to where we were almost there and then found ourselves facing a 30 ft drop. We went back up. We found a rattler under a little outcropping but luckily spotted it before we got to close. It took us a few tries but we finally found a way down on the opposite end and opposite side of where we went up. Anna suggested that if we made it back to our RV alive we better say a prayer of thanks. There was couple minutes I wondered if we would be praying that day. But we of course made it and now next time we play Oregon Trail and pass Independence Rock we can write, “I stood Here” on the rock. Do you know why it is called Independence Rock – I didn’t , or at least I never thought about it. The pioneers on the Mormon, Oregon and California trails all passed by the rock and knew that if they didn’t reach it by July 4^th they wouldn’t make it over the mountains before the first snows fell. I am learning something new every day – cool huh.