A storm in Wyoming

Saturday July 10th

We travelled through Wyoming to Cody, the town built by Buffalo Bill, and which now terms itself as 'the small western town with the big city attitude'. It may be true, but it’s some boast. The Wyoming plains and sky were overwhelming and we felt very small.



I am proud of these photos : )













That night we camped on the prairie, the sky gathering into a storm as we were putting up our tents. As usual I was slower than anyone else, knots and pegs mutinous in unpractised fingers. I was inside the barely erect tent when the storm broke. It was like being in the Devil’s mouth as the tent whirled and jerked with me, grasping on to the barely erect pole for all I was worth.


















After the storm - a road turned river



The storm ended as suddenly as it had begun and I glugged a quick whisky, celebrating the fact that both I and the tent remained standing. When I peeked outside, I took another celebratory drink. Sometimes slowness pays. The rest of the group, more efficien than me, had their tents up before the storm broke, and had taken refuge in the dry of the bus. As a result their tents were scattered across the prairie and the evening was spent in retrieving and drying them out.















Later some of us spent the evening drinking cheap Californian wine in a nearby laundrette. It stood where buffalo once roamed but W. F Cody saw to that and made the land safe for washing machines. My diary records that I somehow upset Sharon Lehman, a large and bouncy New Yorker with a smile like sunshine, but it doesn’t record how, or why. That’s the trouble with diaries. They can bring back memories of how I saved a tent, but not something as important as that.