Oregon Trail Theme Day

Oct 20-21, 2021

The first software game I ever played was “The Oregon Trail,” in the late 1990s. Our daughters were the perfect age to love it. They got to play the part of a pioneer heading West. There were so many decisions to make, and every decision had consequences.

Unforeseen tragedies awaited. Your wagon might break an axle. Your food supplies might run low. Beloved family members might spike a fever. (I seem to recall that Grandma tended to get the worst of it.) Every leg of the journey called for more decisions. Often it would be prudent to lighten your load — it was essential to spare the oxen! That meant leaving a pile of belongings on the side of the rutted road. 

Some twenty years later, the lessons learned along the Oregon Trail come to mind as the pavement unfurls under Big Blue. Is it time to lighten our load to spare the oxen?

Conversations with Strangers at the Kum & Go

When we leave Lake Viva Naughton we head to the small town of Kemmerer, Wyoming. Big Blue needs gas and we also need to buy propane. 

Doug spots the Kum & Go Gas Station and pulls in. While he’s at the gas pump, I go inside to use the restroom. Then I chat with the friendly clerk who tells me my husband asked about propane, but they’re probably out.

“I can’t keep anything in stock anymore,” she says. “I have no idea why not.”

There’s an older woman waiting to pay for a cup of coffee. She makes eye contact with me so I ask her if she grew up in Kemmerer. 

“Oh no,” she says. “I’ve only been here some thirty years.” 

I’ve lived in rural areas so I understand her meaning. If you’re not born in a small town you’re perpetually second tier. It doesn’t matter how many decades you live in that place. You’re never local.

I look at her with all the interest I feel and don’t have to ask another question. She tells me she ended up in Kemmerer because her husband got a job helping build the Exxon plant outside of town. (We had noticed the huge operation and wondered what it was.) When he died, she worked for the schools. Now she drives the ambulance. Everybody here has been so good to her!

As we’re talking, a young woman comes up with coffee in hand, and secretively gestures to the clerk that she also wants to pay for the ambulance driver’s coffee. 

When the ambulance driver thanks her, the young woman shrugs and says, “I didn’t do that, I don’t know who did.”

While all this is happening, I’m still waiting for Doug to figure out the propane situation.

The next woman in line, who looks to be about my age, asks the clerk a lot of questions about how to buy a lottery ticket. She says to me, apologetically, “I don’t usually do this but it’s up to $712,000.”

I say, “Seven hundred thousand dollars could change your life.”

She says, “Oh, not my life, my life is fine the way it is, but it could change my kids’ lives.”

“Well I hope you win,” I tell her.

“It would be nice for them,” she says. “I’d be happy to still have my $5.”

When I tell Doug these conversations later, he replies, “I’ve never had a bad experience at a Kum & Go.”

Kemmerer, WY: The J.C. Penney “Mother Store”

Another reason I wanted to stop in Kemmerer is that I noticed a sign on Route 30 that said something about the J.C. Penney “mother store”. I figure it won’t be hard to find. Sure enough, the store is still in operation, right across from the town square. Which is really a triangle, but no matter. 

We pop into the store to look around. It just opened for the day and is crowded with inventory. The clerk repeatedly apologizes for the mess. I say, “You’re doing all the seasons at once here, I see.” I take a few photos, and we leave so the clerk can put things to rights.

I notice a portrait of the founder, John Cash Penney. It’s not particularly charming, let’s put it that way.

Then Doug notices a sign about the founder’s childhood home, on another side of the town triangle. Unfortunately it’s closed for the season. We go up to all the windows and peer in — it’s a little square house with four rooms furnished to represent the early 1900s. We really wish we could go inside. 

Doug says, “You know, after living in a camper, it looks pretty big to me.”

Montepelier, ID: The Oregon Trail

Doug has been reading that the Oregon trail passed through this area, and discovers that there’s a museum nearby. So we decide to detour to Montpelier, Idaho to see it.

Siri gives us the directions and we drive a couple of hours. When we arrive, we discover that the National Oregon/California Trail Center Museum is closed for the season. Sometimes Siri really blows it. I’d gotten pretty excited about visiting this museum. 

Oh well. Since we can’t visit the museum we decide to go out for lunch. The busiest place is “Ranch Hand,” attached to a gas station. We both order mushroom burgers with fries, and the food is quite good.

Everyone there, including the waitress, is wearing camouflage. No one is wearing a mask. But no one makes a fuss about our masks, and we don’t linger once we’re done eating.

(A “keeping it real photo” because not every road picture is beautiful!)

A Conversation In the Grocery Store Parking Lot

Before we head to a campground, we decide to buy groceries. In the parking lot of a store called Broulims, a woman offers us her shopping cart. 

Doug responds to her friendly gesture by saying “Can we give you a crockpot? A coffeepot?”

Of course the woman is very surprised by his response.

We explain ourselves by gesturing to our rig and saying, “We just don’t have enough room.”

She agrees to take both the coffeepot and the crockpot! I put them in the grocery cart she offered us, and trundle the items over to her car where a couple of small dogs are very excited to see us. 

Then Doug appears holding a large, rather heavy green bag. It’s our screen tent. I tell her, “It’s a nice screen tent, I promise, barely used. We just don’t have room.” 

“Are you sure?”

“You would be doing us a favor if you took it,” we assure her.

Lightening Our Load, Oregon-Trail-Style

After we buy our groceries, we take a good look at the unwanted items we’ve been collecting in the back seat of the truck. One is a battery-operated fluorescent light fixture that doesn’t hold a charge, and another is a 12 volt vacuum with lackluster suction. Both of these items came with the camper so we assumed they were useful or necessary. But no one needs a light that doesn’t light or a vacuum that doesn’t vac. Feeling rather gleeful, we bag the items up and toss them into a dumpster.

We still have other items to give away: a saw, a blue laundry wand that disassembles, a bucket, a warm undershirt of mine that creeps up on me, and the spotting scope and tripod. We seriously consider putting the items on the side of the road by the Oregon Trail museum, but figure something will be lost in translation.

Then we head through beautiful countryside to an RV park in the nearby town of Paris.