It Is Good To Be Home

 

When we decided to head out to Wyoming for this vacation, one place that immediately came to mind was a trip to visit the former ranch of my great great grandparents. If one goes out to your great great great grandparents, one has a maximum of 62 direct ancestors. Of my 62 direct ancestors, all have direct ties in Iowa and all but 4 of those are buried in Iowa. Two of those not buried in Iowa are buried only 50 feet south of the state line and the other two are buried out in NE Colorado though they were born in Iowa. Those two people moved independently out to Wyoming, met, married and bought their first ranch in SE Wyoming, not far from the path we were going to use to head back home on this trip. So I plugged the coordinates into my GPS and off we went.

Eventually the paved roads ended and we turned into a private two track gravel land running through pastures over cattle guards and with numerous private property signs saying no trespassing. I figured since I was planning on introducing myself should anyone still live there that I wasn't trespassing and proceeded on. After a couple miles of proceeding down the two track lane through several pastures, I came to the scene above. I drove in and knocked on the door of the house but it looked deserted and not lived in though cared for. There was a security camera above the door so I'm guessing someone is wondering what I was up too. None of the buildings looked old enough to be belonging to my great great grandparents though the house could have been and had just been resided or added onto at some point. Being on security camera footage though, I didn't want to poke around any so we just left the same way we came. I did liberate a large stone from the edge of the two track lane to take home and add to our landscaping out front as a way to remember my brief visit.

From the ranch of my great great grandparents, we drove for awhile and then stopped in the small town of Chugwater to visit this place which I found listed in Atlas Obscura online. Obviously others know about Atlas Obscura as there were several others there checking it out as we were. While one of my daughters got an orange soda fountain drink, I walked across the street to the general mercantile store and bought a "prairie pie" which they were known for. It was a granola bar the size of.... well... a cow pie and looked a bit like one from a distance but I'm guessing much tastier. I have never eaten a cow pie so don't know that for certain. We also stopped in at a store known for it's Chugwater Chili seasoning and bought a bottle of spice for our pantry. They were all out of chili so I don't know how it tastes.... yet.

From there, we finally exited the great state of Wyoming into Colorado and before stopping for the night, drove to the small town of Berthoud where my great great grandparents spend the final years of their lives after they sold their ranch and are buried there. I haven't written much about Maude but have written a bit about William Wells and his father and grandfather. His father was a Civil War deserter and burned to death in a fire while guarding a train depot and his grandfather died after being run over by trains. William found out about his father's death while aboard a train. Needless to say, the family had bad luck with trains. William however lived a decently long life and after ranching, spent the latter part of his life farming near Berthoud, Colorado. With my visit to their grave, I have now visited the graves of all my great great grandparents. I still have I think a half dozen or so graves to visit to complete seeing those of all my great great great grandparents. 

We spent the night in nearby Fort Collins, Colorado at a generic motel. It had a good view of all the dog owners taking their dogs out to shit on the grass in the early morning hours and "forgetting" to pick it up and dispose of it.  We spent a short day driving east to Grand Platte, Nebraska where we stopped in for a visit with one of my wife's nieces. I never wrote about it but she lost her boyfriend to suicide a few months ago and we made a trip out to support her during the funeral, the only ones to be with her during that time. She is doing a bit better but still has a way to go in the grieving process. The following morning, we bid our goodbyes and made the long drive the rest of the way home.

As I always think when I return home from a long road trip, "It is good to be home."