Getting around Wyoming in the Winter

This is my pickup.  Those are tire chains. Tire chains make the impassable passable.

Today we went hunting – for Christmas trees.  This is the 3rd year we have taken off into the woods to bag the perfect tree, and we go to where no man would want to travel.  We can do that because I have a 4 wheel drive pickup, and as everyone knows, with 4 wheel drive you can go anywhere.

Not.

When the girls were small, we owned a 1970-something International Travelall.  It was immense and we called it the Bus, because at one time it was a bus.  It was about the same size as a Suburban, but with an extra row of seats.  Built on a one-ton frame, it could hold a cord of firewood – inside.

There was an vacant field on the east side of Cheyenne where we would take our dogs and let them run.  We did this once following a snowfall, when Cheyenne’s (in)famous wind had created some truly impressive drifts.  One of those drifts was blocking the road/trail which we needed to follow.  Sherry said “Let’s turn around and go back.”  I refuted her assertion that the drift was a problem and told her that, since we had 4-wheel drive we could go anywhere.

I was proven wrong.

That massive amount of steel and rubber, powered by a 400+ cubic inch engine, dove into the drift and came to a sudden stop. We became high-centered, with not one of the wheels getting any traction.

With Sherry shooting an “I told you so” look at me, I got out and started clearing the snow away.  It was an insurmountable task, and we would have been there for a long, long time if it had not been for Bill and Alice Karls, two friends who showed up with more shovels, a tow strap and a 4 wheel drive pick up that was not stuck.

They got us out of the drift, and we went home.

Today with the chains we went as far as I could without getting stuck, thinking about that fateful afternoon 30 years ago, and knowing that Bill and Alice would not be coming to our rescue.

We got our trees, had a good time, and made it home just fine.