Winnebago Voyage: Lander & South Pass City

I don't know if I can get this posted since the WiFi here is pretty slack and I only have one bar of 3G on my phone, but here goes! It may not get posted until sometime tomorrow. There's a lot of this part of Wyoming without cell data coverage! Maybe I get get the text posted and add the pictures later.

We left Rawlins and drove north on route 789 and then 287 to our campground just south of Lander. We didn’t have much cell service most of the way, so we couldn’t call ahead, but they had an open spot. We got there by mid-morning, so had most of the day to drive around.

Our first destination was the ghost town of South Pass City. The town is almost deserted (only 4 residents!), but isn’t what I think of as a ghost town, since the buildings have mostly been restored and furnished with furniture and items from the time period. The town was thriving during the gold rush, but then died away. There’s a charitable foundation that keeps up the buildings. It would be fun to browse through a really spooky ghost town, but that could never happen in any place where much of the public could get to. I’m sure it happens when hikers go to remote areas, but that’s not us!

We drove a little further to the actual spot of the South Pass, which is where most of the pioneer trails would go to get across this part of the country. It’s hard to wrap our heads around the thoughts of traveling here in a wagon train!

We stopped by the Museum of the American West. We didn’t go into the museum since we had the dogs and there was no shade, but they had a lot of restored buildings on their grounds, and a lady said we could look inside them with the dogs, so we strolled around there for a while.

We wanted to go to Sinks Canyon State Park which is just outside Lander, but they had just put fresh tar on the road, and I didn’t need that to add to all the dirt on my car!