Pinedale

July 10

We were up and ready to hit the road early. The drive to Pinedale was easy. I can say that since Rob does all the driving, although I’ve been threatening. Except for a few areas of road work, there were no glitches and we arrived in Pinedale before lunch. The rest of our group was already encamped at the Wind River View RV Park. Very Spartan, the park has few amenities. The pads are scraped from the native flora.  Power poles supply multiple coaches, but water and sewer hookups are individual. Power was only 30 amp, which would have been fine, but it kept cutting out on us in the middle of the night when usage was minimal. We changed outlets after that and had no further problems. There was also a large, clean laundry room which I made use of.

View from the campground behind the coaches.

The 10^th through the 13^th was the 79^th celebration of the Green River Rendezvous. Between 1825 and 1840 fur trappers came out of the mountains to meet where the Green River and Horse Creek converge and trade their pelts for supplies. From as early as 1500 beaver pelts were in demand in Europe. They were used for felt hats popular with the monarchs and aristocracy. When the European beaver population was destroyed explorers turned to the New World for a new supply. The Green River area was rich with beavers causing trappers to flock to the area. Within 15 years the beavers were decimated and the trapping boom was over.

The Rendezvous is a reenactment of the meetings and the consequent settling of the area.  Trappers’ camps and Shoshone settlements were set up displaying the way of life in the early 1800s. Participants wore costumes of buckskin and furs, long dresses and bonnets, Indians with symbols painted on teepees, clothing, faces and horses….

There were several speakers with historical programs. I attended a presentation by Michael Bad Hand Terry, a Seminole and expert on the Plains Indians. He described the life of Plains Indians and how they evolved from nomadic hunters and gatherers to stable communities. He had exhibits showing how every part of the buffalo was used, such as the shoulder blade could be used as a dinner plate, a digging implement, or a hoe. Sometimes not “politically correct”, he dispelled several myths about Indian life. For example, he stated that Indians did not prefer to ride their horses bareback. When horses found their way into their life, coming ultimately from Spain via Mexico, they came with saddles and bridles.

Saturday the main street was closed down for a parade. Mountain men, in full costume, rode in wagons or on horseback. Indians, whooped it up as they made their way down the parade route on foot or on horseback, (mostly bareback)! There were also more modern participants, mainly local candidates for office in the election coming up riding in a variety of cars and farm vehicles.

The Rendezvous culminated Sunday with a big pageant at the rodeo grounds. Hundreds of local residents participated in authentic costumes. The stage was set with teepees arranged in front of a frontier army post. The participants would act out the history of the settling of this part of the frontier to a narrated script.

The Pageant Cast

One Brave, of many

Trading with the American Fur Company

Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman

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Back at the RV park our group prepared to depart the next morning. Rob and I stayed an extra day with our friends Stan Wright and Jerre Glasgow. Rob and Stan went fishing while Jerre and I had a relaxing day cleaning and shopping and getting ready to move the next day.

Rob's Brown trout