Discovering Wyoming: Karen & Andrea's Excellent Adventure (Part I)

When WWW member, fiction writer and western history aficionado, Andrea Downing, invited me to spend a week with her in Wyoming, I got excited. Very excited. Wyoming had long been at the top of my travel wish list.

Oxbow Bend on the Snake River, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Since Andrea and I had only met face-to-face one time at the Women Writing the West conference last year, we discussed some of the critical points of sharing a living space for a week. Her favorite breakfast is cereal and fruit...mine is a quick scrambled egg. She sips tea while I gulp coffee. She’s a night owl. I’m the early to bed, early to rise type. Andrea is from New York City (via England). I’m from South Central Texas (via the Gulf Coast.)

However, we soon discovered our shared love of western history and landscapes made us boon companions on a quest to learn about Wyoming’s past and geographical beauty. We wanted to learn “the lay of the land.”

The serenity of Wyoming’s Teton Mountain Range often left me awestruck. We followed the Snake River north from Jackson to places foreign to me. Menor’s Ferry, Death Canyon, Gros Ventre, Slide Lake. We crossed Antelope Flats where buffalo truly roam. (Who knew?)

At OxBow Bend we stood for long moments absorbing the splendid grace of the region, the clean line where unaltered nature butted against human footprint.

"Cowboy" Raven who has secrets to tell.

When it came time to leave Oxbow Bend, a Raven, black as pitch, stood at Andrea’s car door and would not move even as she tried to back out of the parking area. I suggested that the bird might be an omen. He had a message for us, maybe, and we needed to be very still in order to learn what it was.

At Yellowstone National Park our last full day of exploring, it rained. But our spirits were not dampened.

Yellowstone Lake at Geyser Basin

We photographed Old Faithful then drove to Geyser Basin where the dark and damp sky seemed oddly appropriate for the otherworldly bubbling mud and smelly steam wafting all around us.

Wyoming did not disappoint. I hiked around hidden lakes, gazed across broad valleys, breathed deep the scent of thick pine forests which, thankfully, has stayed with me.

I am just as inspired by the fact that two women from vastly different backgrounds and lifestyles easily found common ground through travel and historical study. It helped, of course, that both of us enjoy a good belly laugh.

That old black Raven might end up in my next tome - like the fairy tale toad who is turned into a prince. “Raven” will be a young black headed cowboy who gallops down one of the Teton Mountain passes on his way to the Stagecoach Bar and Grill to look for his favorite two-stepping gal from New York City.

Thanks for the memories, Andrea!

Karen Casey Fitzjerrell's novel The Dividing Season, won the 2013 EPIC Award for Best Historical fiction.










(Blog Coordinator's note: Check back next week for Andrea's side of the story....)