In the group ranch hand photo, my dad is second from left and one of him on his horse also.
On my way back from Sturgis a couple of years ago (See attached pics. ) I took a little side trip into the wilds of Wyoming, west of Kaycee. My dad was a real cowboy on a ranch out near the Hole in the Wall during the late 1920's and early 30's. You'll remember that the Hole in the Wall was an outlaw hideout for the likes of Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid et al. The end of the outlaw era was around 1910 but I remember stories my dad told about seedy characters still being around in the 20's; about finding a decomposing saddle and saddle bags, an old rusted Winchester and a fist full of silver dollars in the remote terrain out near the Hole.
I rode about 80 miles of dirt road and found the old "Jones Ranch", guided by information gleaned from a map I saw of the old ranches in the area, that was displayed at the little museum in Kaycee and by my memories of old photos of the area left me by my dad. Once you leave the freeway between Buffalo and Casper and head west, you feel like you've entered a time warp. I'm sure things haven't changed much in this neck of the woods from the wild west days out there. Definetly worth the ride into history if you don't mind dusty red dirt and rock chips on your Harley! I'd like to return one day, with more time to spend, on a dirt bike that's more conducive to the road conditions.
Other than hot naked chicks this post is one of the best ever. It makes me want to ride west. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, my pappy had some pretty good tales of the West to tell. I really loved poking around the back country of Wyoming. As a kid in the mid to late fifties, we used to go arrowhead and fossil hunting, fishing and camping there every summer. My uncle was the Superintendent of the Johnson County County Roads Dept., had an intimate knowledge of the area and was an ace at finding stuff. He had what was probably the largest private collections of American Indian artifacts in the world. At that time, he had already been collecting for about 30 years. I remember playing with arrowheads, axe heads, spearheads, stone bowls etc. when I was a kid. He literally had boxes upon boxes of stuff stored everywhere there was room to put it in his house. There were boxes under every bed, chair and in every closet as well as an attic stacked full. He was a genuine eccentric and knew where there were many indian burial grounds and medicine wheels, long before any of them were later discovered and mapped by historians. He was always spooked about them and would never mess with or take anything related to death rituals, astrology, magic or to their dead. Over the years, he had several offers from the Smithsonian Institute, who had heard about him via the grapevine, to send some experts out to photograph and catalogue his collection, but he always refused and kept the stuff stashed in cardboard boxes up til he died. The collection passed on to his sons (my cousins), all 3 of them as eccentric as he was, and is still stored in those boxes, untouched, some 80 years after he started collecting artifacts..