Lander

This is my first time blogging from my phone! I've always blogged from my laptop because I can type faster there and import all the pictures from our nice camera directly to the laptop. But lately I've been taking most of our pictures with my phone, so I figured I'd try this out.

Over the weekend we took a day trip to Lander, WY. My mom asked us what's in Lander, and really the answer is "nothing." It's just a cute small town right up against the Wind River Mountains. And most importantly, it's "only" a 2.5 hour drive from Casper. We were in need of a family adventure. It's been difficult to have Jared working the night shift this time around. In the past when he's worked nights, he usually has woken up by 3:00 in the afternoon, so he'd have a couple hours with us before having to go to work again at 5:00. This time around he's been sleeping until 4:00, so by the time he wakes up all he has time to do is shower and get ready for his next shift. I'm glad he's sleeping until 4:00 and getting a good 7 hours of sleep in, but it's tough to not ever spend time together.

So anyway, we decided on a day trip to Lander because we've already visited all the other towns within a 2-hr drive of Casper and we wanted to explore somewhere new. There really aren't many towns in Wyoming near us.

The drive up was long. We probably won't visit again for that reason. Jack just doesn't do well on long car rides. But Lander itself was cute! The population is less than 10k, and the homes are old and beautiful and full of character. We stopped at a diner where the service was "eh," the food was just "ok," they got our order wrong, and the waitress was kinda mean. At least the food was cheap. Then we went straight up to the mountains, which was a good choice.

We meant to do a short hike to Popo Agie waterfall, but we missed the trailhead and ended up driving a little further up the mountain to a quiet lake instead. This made the trip worth it. The leaves were just barely starting to change, and the lake had lots of sandy beach to play on without another soul in sight. Jack was in heaven. He threw rocks into the lake, dug holes in the sand, and Jared taught him how to sword fight with a couple of sticks. He got the biggest kick out of that.

We are all happiest out in nature. It was cool to realize that if we hadn't accidentally stumbled upon this random mountain lake near Lander, we never would have even heard of it. And we had the best afternoon there making memories as a family! It makes me wonder how many other hidden mountain lakes there are in this world. In the afterlife I want to spend a day on the banks of each one with my family. Quiet quality time in the mountains is my love language.

After a good hour or two relaxing (and changing some gnarly diapers) on the beach by the lake, we knew it was time to head home. We grabbed some chocolate frosties in Riverton and settled in to enjoy the last two hours of our drive while the sun set. Turns out there wouldn't be a lot of "enjoying" the sunset. Jack screamed himself to sleep for 20 minutes and then RIGHT as he finally drifted off to sleep, a deer jumped in front of our car and Jared somehow didn't see it, so I had to scream at him to swerve. We miraculously missed the deer, but Jack woke up and then had to scream himself to sleep all over again for another half hour. By then the sunset was long-gone and we were on edge expecting more deer to jump in front of us. Now we know why everyone in Wyoming has a truck. We'd have way more peace of mind driving around if we knew that hitting a deer wouldn't kill us.

Anyway, overall it was a good trip. We only have another month of good travel weather before the long Wyoming winter sets in. Glad we took advantage of one of our last free weekends. And hopefully after residency the Evanston thing works out so we can live within a mere hour of the Uintah Mountains and all of their beautiful hidden mountain lakes.

Whelp, that's it for this week. I don't think I'll be blogging from my phone again. Typing this all up wasnt as quick and smoothe as I was expecting. It was a good experiment though.