Day 14: All Things Rachel

 July 9, 2021

Vanlog, Medicine Bow National Forest boondocking site, near Laramie, WY

I have thought often, of course, about my daughter on this trip, but today I especially missed her. In the last 24 hrs there were so many things that reminded me of her, where I thought wow, she'd really like this or where I wanted to ask her a biology question or where there was some special connection to the past. So this started yesterday actually at the Wheeler Lake with the amphibian creature that Charlie thought was an axolotl. I am certain Rachel would have known what it was and would have been able to help me to identify many of the wildflowers. Today, after saying goodbye to Charlie, I went to Chautauqua Park in Boulder, the gateway to many trails into the surrounding Flatiron Mountains. I did the 3.2-mile loop on Chautauqua trail, Flatiron loop, and Blueberry Mesa trail. There was a rock climbing area there that Rachel would have loved and that had a similar pitch and number of crack to the wall where she first learned how to climb in Yosemite NP. Then I drove to Boulder Falls along Boulder Canyon Drive. Finally, I stopped for lunch at Barker Reservoir in Nederland, CO. While I was here picnicking, I was fortunate enough to see a fish hatchery truck stock 3000 trout into the lake. Since Rachel studied wildlife biology in college, I am sure she would have loved seeing this experience. Then in the small town of Nederland, I toured the free mining museum and the Carousel of Happiness. The latter reminded me of her childhood, when it was "our thing" to go on the carousel. 

Seeing as it was 101 degrees in Boulder and a heat dome has settled over the Southwest setting all sorts of temperature records, I headed north to Cheyenne, WY on Rt 25 and then west on Rt 80 toward Laramie. Here, I got off the freeway at another world famous rock climbing place called Vedauwoo in the Medicine Bow National Forest. Of course this also reminded me of Rachel. The place has a national forest campground with about 50 sites and a forest service road with another 70 dispersed camping sites and all were full by 4:30 PM. So I drove to an even more remote spot on Forest Road 712 and secured a very windy site off a dirt road with very spotty cell service.