My French Grandmother Would be Appalled : Strasburg, CO to Dubois, WY

Vedauwoo

As many of our readers know, the last few years we have pretty much made up our travel destinations on the fly. After eating breakfast in suburban Denver (Cracker Barrel), we knew we needed to decide on a route by the time we reached Cheyenne, Wyoming. Our options were to go north through Casper to Montana, or west toward Laramie, Rawlins, etc. for Utah, etc. But after looking at the map we decided to stray from the original “Pacific Northwest” and detoured toward the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Chris had never been to northwest Wyoming! With his interest in geologic “stuff” and love of travel it seemed like a place he would have visited before. Well, it was time to rectify the situation... We lunched at Undine Park in Laramie, Wyoming, on our brisket sandwiches (home-made brisket sandwiches for vacation lunches is a long-standing Reid-Mitchum-Rippel tradition). It was then back to I-80. We turned north at Rawlins, passed through Lander, and stopped for the night in Dubois, Wyoming. After checking in at the KOA, we toured the downtown area of Dubois and visited the local grocery store for some staples we needed: bread, paper towels, etc. (“How fascinating”, you think). Then back to our temporary home for the night. Why would my French grandmother be appalled? Grandma Smith was an immigrant from southern France when she was twelve. She always cringed when we would tell her about friends with French names that had been Americanized (Bourgeois pronounced something like “bur-goyce”, rather than the much prettier-sounding French pronunciation that I can only phonetically spell as something like “boor-zhwa”). Well, my great uncle and aunt (other side of the family!) lived in Dubois for awhile and I've been taught to pronounce it “du-boyce” rather than the French “du-bwa”. Grandma would NOT be amused... Tomorrow? Yellowstone and vicinity. Note to our loyal followers: Most of the time we've been in Wyoming we have not had internet or even phone service, period. That's why this blog is already past due. As soon as we get in to an area with some service we will be loading all the days we've prepared.