Wednesday July 4, 2012

What a busy day!  We had breakfast this morning and then headed into downtown to watch an old-time parade.  It was wonderful – lots of tractors, fire engines, old cars, lots of horses, and flatbed trucks loaded with high school reunion participants.  There were several guys next to us who were lobbing water balloons (by hand and with a giant sling-shot) at some of the fire engines and floats as they went by.  Some of the firemen retaliated by hosing them down!  We loaded back into the truck and drove out to South Pass.  Charlie and Barb thought they were going to have a celebration out at the old gold mining town, but they had changed the date to the 14th.  We had a good time looking at the old buildings:  hotel, school, jailhouse, houses, markets, etc.  We then drove down the road a little to Atlantic City, population 57, to have lunch in the old saloon.  On the way back to town we stopped at Sink Canyon.  At one spot you can feed the trout in the river – the boys really enjoyed that.  At the next spot we saw the waterfall and the cave carved out of the rock – quite cool there and very picturesque.  The water runs underground from the cave to the “fish pond”.  We went back to the house for a short time for sandwiches and then headed out again for the rodeo.  We watched bull riding, bucking bronco riding, calf roping, etc.  The boys really enjoyed the experience and voted bull riding as their favorite.  There were no fireworks tonight as the fire danger here is extremely high – Lander had not had any appreciable rain since April!  We got home at 10 so the boys will have to write in their journals tomorrow.