7-7-2018 Rock Springs, WY

Rock Springs, in my opinion, is the sister city of Pahrump.  Pahrump is an Indian word meaning, “water from rock.”  When we thought that we would retire, we investigated various places to retire and Rock Springs was rated as one of the best.  So we visited and we were astonished at how dismal a place it was, everyone out of business and many buildings boarded up.  That was in the 1990s.  Today, we had to see if there were any differences in our recollection of Rock Springs.  We were amazed at what a thriving town it now is.  Maybe there were one or two places that were boarded up.  The rest of the town is open for business, the railroad is running and there are almost no houses for sale.  Today in Rock Springs, the economy is apparently on the upswing! 

There is a 150 mile loop to drive while in the Rock Springs-Green River area encircling Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area.  Green River and Black Forks River come together in this place and flow down into the Colorado River.  Over the millennia, they carved out a beautiful canyon with walls of red sandstone that explorer Major John Wesley Powell tagged Flaming Gorge in 1869.

Jeepster in Flaming Gorge

Construction of Flaming Gorge Dam began in 1958 and was completed 5 years later.  Jack Kennedy flipped the switch and activated the first turbine.  The dam created the Flaming Gorge Lake, 91 miles long and now a fantastic recreational area as well as a source of hydroelectricity that services 6 states.  Fishing is a big sport, as well.  Trophies such as bass, catfish, trout and salmon weighing 20-50 pounds are caught in this lake.  Salmon require salt water as part of their life cycle but because they are landlocked here, the life cycle of one particular species, the Kokanee salmon, a dwarfed type of sockeye salmon, is short, roughly 4 years.

Flaming Gorge Lake (or reservoir)

Flaming Gorge Dam

Along the way, signs read, “Uinta Mountain, contains cannonball size concretions,” and “Uinta Mountain, where the oldest fossils in Utah have been found,” for example.  I am not sure what a concretion is but it sounds like something with which I would not want to be bonked on the head, especial a cannonball size one.  Maybe some of the fossils were caused by cannonball size concretions.  Fossils listed are dinosaurs, dinosaur tracks, shark teeth and sea shells.  Upon stopping at an historic marker, we learned that some of the rocks in the area are fairly young, 49 million years, while others down the way have been dated at 1.1 billion years old.  So my question is:  after the big bang, the whole earth is something-billion years old, isn’t it?  Or are certain sections only 49 million years old (Not 50 but 49.)?  Also, where did these youngsters come from, meteor impact?  How do they know these things?

When the dam was completed and the gates were closed, formation of the reservoir began.  A small town, Linwood, first established in 1900, was flooded and disappeared and is known as The Town that Drowned.  The Utah-Wyoming state line is located on the 41^st parallel and the community of Linwood had the distinction of being located in two states because it lay on either side of the state line.  The small school house in Linwood was one of its kind in the country run by two state school boards.  The north half of the school was run by Wyoming and the south half by Utah.

Here, far underwater, lies
 The Town That Drowned, Linwood

A short 115 mile drive later and we are camped in Rawlins, WY, home of Buck’s Sports Grill where one can enjoy a basket of walleye fingers for lunch.  Also, you may recall Rawlins historic penitentiary.  This is where a 16 year old girl, Annie Bryce, was imprisoned in the 1800s.  She made up a concoction of rat poison that was determined to kill about twenty people and put it in her dad’s plum pie.  It took him 15 minutes to die.  Her official testimony was that she did it because she had never seen a human die before and she was curious.  They let her out, ultimately, because her mom complained about the difficulty of bringing her food all the time.  The prison is an interesting trip back in history.  Anyway, we had been there before so we just drove by this time and, lo and behold, venison on the hoof was grazing in the front yard grass!

Buck's Sports Grill, featuring a basket of walleye fingers!

Venison on the hoof on the prison grounds. 
I love deer, they are delicious!

This is also the location of our first trip to the laundry facilities so not much else was in the plans for today (except for walleye).  A short drive tomorrow takes us to Laramie and Jubilee Days.  We didn’t know much about Jubilee Days except what we had read in a travel magazine but it became clear that it was the next destination after the 4^th of July in Park City.  We will be in Laramie for 5 days so there will be more stories to come.