Way Out There

Let’s talk about living way out here. This might be a little random, so hang on tight and try to stay with me.

We’ve talked about our location, 100 Reasons to Love WY, Rural Living, Wide Open Spaces, and a host of other things. But there’s so much more. Sometimes I can’t even describe it.

Sometimes I don’t think about the differences until I realize the action that I’m taking.

1. Finger Wave

(yeah…that’s ice on the road.)

No, not that finger. You know. That little flick of the pointer finger up when you are passing another truck in the road. The little acknowledgment that each other are drivers and that you were aware of each other.

Well, I hardly ever do that anymore. Maybe while I’m in “town”, I might do a little finger wave.

Most people around here do a full hand wave.

Straight up, all fingers shown, palm out, with a wave motion.

When passing a tractor, rig, ranch equipment in the road, there’s the full arm-up-in-the-air-wave.

Why?

Because we all KNOW each other.

Chances are, in a small town/community of only 100 people, the person that you are passing, meeting in the road is the same person you will be feeding later on that day at branding, shipping or buying a bull from later on in the week.

Or at pizza night.

2. Pizza

We have a little pizza truck that comes to the small towns around the area on different nights and serves pizza. In Hyattville, our night for pizza is Wednesdays. The truck parks at the inn and uses the building to serve the pies. The whole community goes. It’s pretty good thin crust pizza. Their breadsticks are pretty tasty too. One of our best “dates” while being here was this past summer in a hayfield with this company’s pizza. Warm, fresh, handmade pizza with a cold coke, at the base of the Big Horns and next to a small creek, with the moon rising over the mountains, makes for a memorable experience.

(The Paint Rock. Located 20 yards south from the town bar. Only opened up on Wednesday evenings for pizza night)

Remember…this is the west. We don’t have many churches that have services on Wednesday nights. If there is a church with a service/meeting on Wednesday nights, it’s an hour away.

Also, the nearest “fast food” is almost 45 mins to an hour away. The Inn was open Thursdays- Sundays during the months of August, September and part of October for hunting season but closes during the rest of the year.

3. The bar

Well, there’s always the bar. The grill is usually open in the afternoons and you’ll find a hamburger there. Most people know its exact location and most directions can be given from this spot.

4. Food

So, where do we get our food? Wal-Mart and Blair’s. Blair’s is a market/grocery only in the state of Wyoming. Once every 5-7 weeks we make a big trip over the basin to the Walmart in Cody. It’s the nearest one for us at an hour and 45 minutes away. We could go over the mountain to Sheridan. In the summer months it takes us about an hour and 15 minutes to get over there. But from September to the end of May, there’s a really huge risk of snow and ice when you come over the pass. It’s a no go.

We keep a running list on the refrigerator for needed items. The night before our trip, I make our full grocery list. I’ve been making a list for about 12 years now, I have them saved in the computer and it’s separated out in aisles. We use two buggies and it takes us about three hours in the store. We have the whole thing down and could make it out in an hour if we really tried hard, but we like to look at things and price compare. We do a good bit of playing in the store too. J

We split up the list to tackle the items. Clara usually goes with Matt and Ruby is my helper. We get our veggies and fruit frozen and in cans. We also get fresh produce while there too. The fresh produce usually lasts us about two weeks. After those two weeks, while I am in Worland for homeschool playdates, or for church, I’ll run in a local owned store named Blair’s and get our produce for the next two weeks. Sometimes I order a basket of produce from Bountiful Baskets. Another ranch wife will pick the basket up 17 miles away every two weeks. We usually have the same rotation of foods, sometimes I change it up. I plan all our meals out and keep the meal calendar on the refrigerator. If I don’t feel like making meatloaf, I can switch that meal for something else. I have all the ingredients already. There are also many, many food items that you can freeze. We have a big deep freezer and an extra refrigerator (the house that we live in already had one and we have a personal refrigerator that moves with us). My meals aren’t elaborate and I use the crock pot A LOT. We also have a good many traditions—Saturday night pancake night, chocolate muffin Sunday mornings, first Monday meatless, Wednesday night dessert, etc. It makes meal planning easier. There are some items that we’ll forget but we just have to wait for the next trip.

I order most everything for birthdays, celebrations, truck parts, school items, etc. online. We know our FedEX drivers and UPS drivers and their drop off schedules.

5. Delivery

Yeah… one of our FedEx driver drives a 4×4 Cummings Dodge Ram 2500. He needs it. (I think he was delivering a set of tires for the ranch this day.)

Krispy Kreme’s can always been sent through the mail. When I walked into our little post office, you could SMELL them. The nearest stores/bakeries are in Idaho, Utah and down in Colorado. Sometimes I’m convinced I could open one (and a Zaxby’s—well maybe not in the land of beef) and make a killing. J

Our little, tiny post office. The ranch is about six miles east from this little gem. It’s just north, by about 40 steps, of the bar. It’s about a 10×15 building. Ms. Kathy is our resident mail woman. We do not have door to door delivery. Everyone with a Hyattville address has a PO Box. The incoming mail gets to the little office between 9:30-9:45am. Ms. Kathy closes at 1:30pm on Monday through Friday. On Saturdays she’s there from 8:30am to noon. The incoming mail bag on Saturdays usually gets to the office by 9am. That’s it. If you miss those times, you wait until next time she’s open.

Planning. Everything takes lots of organization and planning. Add snow, ice, or 500 cows moving down the road and everything requires more time and planning.

6. The community

The community center. This building was the old Hyattville School. It’s about 50 yards west of the bar. The last classes held there was around 10 years ago. A recent renovation of most of the rooms, gym, floors, cafeteria area, kitchen, offices, library, etc. has the place looking really, really good. We have county library services on Mondays and Wednesdays. A book club meets in the middle of the week here. Most of the town meets for morning coffee at 7am every morning. The county bus picks up local students here to bus them 45 minutes back to the nearest schools. We meet in the gym on Tuesday mornings to play with some other preschool kids in the area. Cowboy carnival is held in and around the building. There’s wifi there. There’s a nice workout room, media presentation room, history room and two full classrooms for meetings. It’s a hopping place and it’s never locked. Every town out here has a community center with all kind of events, open gym times, roller rink times (yep…the ones with wood floors have an open skating time, with shoes on site to rent). It’s a different concept, but is pretty neat once you’ve experienced it.

The center has a pretty nice website and people get updates through community emails.

http://www.hyattville.org/

7. The signs

Wooden signs everywhere. In Georgia, you have nice, beautiful iron type signs that tell about an important event, place or person. You’ll see the signs on the side of the road.

Image: flicker

I love the Georgia signs. Wyoming signs are big, wooden and sometimes stuck in the middle of nothing. We will be celebrating the 125^th year of state hood this year, so Georgia has quite a bit more history markers than Wyoming. The Wyoming signs are usually telling about the settlement of the community, a former major trade post, a popular river crossing of the Mormon’s trek out west, a former trade route, a major battle between Native Americans and the US government, etc.

8. The cowboys

Cowboys. It seriously doesn’t get old. We live a constant rodeo, livestock sale barn, vet office, 4H and FFA show. There’s so much cowboy, cattle, horse talk, hay, and feed price talk; you almost don’t realize you are in the business talk until you are around “town” people. Most of our toys that see the most action here are some form of ranching, farming, cattle or horse toys. We experience it every day.

9. Traveling

http://map.wyoroad.info/hi.html

Here in Wyoming, everything and every person travels far for just about everything. We check this website just about any time that we have to go away from the ranch in the snowfall/ice months. Wanna go over the mountain to Sheridan? We can’t go if the road is closed because of the 16 inches of snow. Parts of the roads and interstates will close and it is nice to know if and where they are closed. I didn’t ever check if the other states that we lived in had a road conditions site because I never needed to check them. In Georgia, if it snows…you stay put. In Kansas, I didn’t have anywhere to go and the snow doesn’t stick around too long. In Wyoming, well we have snow and ice all the time.

FYI…Kansas has one.

http://511.ksdot.org/Default.aspx?BrowserDetect=Yes

 

And so does Georgia.

http://www.511ga.org/#zoom=2&lat=33.41815&lon=-83.2595

 

Never had to use them in those states. The Wyoming road conditions website is used all the time by the ranch workers and this family.

That brings me to cell phone coverage.

10. Cell Phones

We don’t really have any cell service at the house. It’s one of the most frustrating things. If you have gotten a text from me, I’m either in a town that is 45 minutes away, stepped out on our porch in a specific spot and holding my phone slightly to the right, at our “phone booth” (the little spot before turning on our lane; where there is one bar of service) or somewhere near a major Wyoming highway…not in a curve, not in a low spot, not near a small group of trees, not near a hill or between, not near a mountain or thinking about mountains.

Those red areas are coverage areas, the white is no coverage. And it’s lying liar of a liar map.

So, how do we exist here?

Matt and I use walkie talkies to communicate to each other during the day. We have to be in a certain range of each other and not around a big hill. As for texting, it rarely happens. Sometimes I get a text a full day after someone sends it, sometimes I get it immediately, but can’t respond. The ranch workers all have high powered radios and the ranch has a radio tower. If I can’t find Matt or need help, I can use the main radio at the ranch office to contact him.

11. The Co-Op

This is our local co-op gas station. I can’t even go into the inner workings of a farm/ranch co-op. Nevertheless, the co-op in Worland has a gas station. We get gas here every Sunday after church. We also will pick up any John Deere parts packages that have been dropped off by the mail truck. That’s right. You read correctly. Matt can call in parts, ask if it can be put on a mail truck and they will drop the packages off at the front door of the gas station, 45-50 minutes south of us. If I happen to be in town, any ranch staff in town, or we are in town for church, someone will stop by and pick up the packages. They sit there a couple of days and I’ve seen some that have a pick up date written on them for a month later. They sit there the whole time and NO ONE bothers them.

12. Goat heads

They hurt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulus_terrestris

http://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/subject.html?sub=3937

That’s it. Twelve random things about living way out here.