Dubois, Wyoming

Friday, June 13, 2014

KOA at Dubois, WY

We made it to Dubois, WY today without incident, given that it's Friday the 13th and Mercury is Retrograde and for all I know the groundhog saw his shadow again. We spent the previous night at a Walmart in Casper. There were about 6 other RVs parked there besides us, which is comforting because you have the illusion of safety in numbers. It was, of course, another expensive "free" night. We spent $80 in Walmart and $40 in the Sam's next door.

Reading outside before it got too windy

This part of Wyoming is looking more and more like Arizona, but it is still the windy Wyoming I remember from many years ago. We traveled mostly on two lane roads, all of which were in very good shape and incredibly empty. It is such a nice departure from driving back East. Tomorrow we'll take the car and do a Grand Teton loop. There is one pass we have to go through which makes me a little nervous with the rig, but one of the workers at the camp here said not to worry, it's a 7% and only drops about 2,000 feet. We'll check it out tomorrow.

The roads here have these peculiar signs that I've never seen anywhere before. They look like mile markers, but obviously aren't. I figured that they had something to do with telling you what the passing lanes were when there was too much snow on the road. Here is what one looks like:

I went looking online and could only find one place that discussed them, and it was a wacko conspiracy site that thinks they have something to do with the military taking over the country. A more rational view is that they are there to aid road crews when they have to repaint the lines on the road after winter snow removal scrapes them off. I still don't know for sure. 

Good news! Karen is back. Garmin Karen, that is. The voice Australian Karen is very popular, and was erased when I recently did a software upgrade. It took an email to Garmin and some not so obvious instructions to get her back. She is much more specific in her directions because she doesn't just tell you to "turn right", but she'll tell you the street to turn on. She's not always right, but she is precise. Besides, I love the way she reads Washington highways (WA) as Western Australia. This is Karen:

Karen Jacobsen

She is a singer, and says she thought of naming her next album "Recalculating".