Dubois, WY

Wednesday was an administrative day. We drove the thirty or so miles into old friend Dubois (population 900+), gassed, propaned, washed, dumped (through the kindness of the laundromat guy, who also owns the car wash, which had a clean-out...a bit of Western kindness and resourcefulness), provisioned, stimulated the local economy, and took pix for the blog. Dubois is just northeast of the Winds, one of its gateways, and a place we have visited or passed through many times. 

Our base near Togwotee Pass was too far away to do the ride to Green River Lakes, one of my favorite places, so we needed to find a place to park/camp further south, high up, and connected to the CDT system. A look at the map and conversations with NFS personnel and Lava Lodge suggested the Warm Springs parking lot, on Union Pass Road, southwest of highway #26. In normal snow years, we probably wouldn't have tried it. But this year, no problem. We got there, up a few miles of switchbacks, great dirt road, some snow and ice, well before dark. It turned out to be a place we have snowmobiled through many times, a quarter mile from the Line Shack and not too far from the Tie Hack and other places we have over-nighted on previous snowtreks in the area. Never knew it had a name. We were the only rig there. 8,300 feet. No service and no wifi, but plenty of snowmobiles riding through to the Line Shack.

At the parking lot near Lava Lodge, a dumpster on skis

I'll always remember Dubois as the place where
they had a saloon in a cave off the main street,
in the early 70s; locals say it was never a saloon,
just beer storage for The Outlaw; I'm sticking
with my story 

Bigger picture

Outside the game meat processing and hide tanning shoppe;
beware of tanning shoppes in Wyoming and Montana; they
may not be what you think...

The Wind River as it wends its way through Dubois; downstream
it becomes the Bighorn River

Elk and bear cult monuments

Typical local architecture

Board walk on main street

Sadly, there was a New Year's Day fire on main street, damaging
or destroying several of the historic buildings

Nice laundromat and sculpture

Free bike use in town

Nice folks, but not to be doubted

Largest known specimen of the Wyoming
Jackalope; the last breeding pair was killed--
one shot--in 1889, just a year before
statehood

--Posted from the very nice Dubois Public Library