Fort Bridger State Historic Site

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 – Fort Bridger, WY

Once everyone was up and moving this morning, Tony and Miranda hopped on my and Mike’s bikes and the kids all hopped on their bikes, while Mike and I walked to Fort Bridger State Historical Site.  It is only a little ways away.  Actually I jogged a little, so I could get ahead of them and take this picture.  :) 

I am not sure the kids really liked seeing the fort again, but I really enjoyed seeing it for the first time.  :)

There is a gift shop at the fort that the kids really wanted to get to because Papa promised they could each have a small bag of jaw breakers.  The jaw breakers in these bags are about pea size.  And Uncle Tony bought each of them a large jaw breaker.  Alex wanted to buy his mom a shot glass, but she did not answer the text message I sent her until much after we left the park.  And he did not want to buy it unless she said it was “Ok”.  :)

When we got back around to the small creek that runs through the property, the kids wanted to wade in the water. 

Van and Ami and Tony and Miranda walked on towards the officer’s quarters and Alex stayed in the water a little longer.  Alex was saying that there were big crawdads in the water and was pointing them out.  Evidently, one of them climbed on his foot.  All of a sudden, he screamed and jumped straight up in the air out of his shoes and tried to run across the top of the water to get to shore.  Once there, he continued jumping up and down yelling that the crawdad had bitten his toe.  He was convinced that it had attacked him.  Mike and I couldn’t hardly talk we were laughing so hard.  After we chased his flipflops down the stream and got them out of the water, we checked his toes but saw no signs of any bites or pinches.  :)  I think the crawdad may have climbed on top of his foot causing him to freak out.  But it was absolutely hilarious to see him jump up in the air and try to run across the top of the water.  He didn’t find any of it funny at all and wouldn’t come near any other crawdads we saw anywhere after that. 

Before we left the park I needed to get a picture of the sign.

As we were headed back to the RV Park we met Dee coming out and she told us the park had no power.  In fact the entire town of Fort Bridger and a couple of other communities had lost power.  She was not sure when it would be back on.  Well it was lunch time and we did not want to open the refrigerator, since we did not know how long power was going to be off.  We called Crazy Ate in Mountain View to see if they were open and they were!  :) We had a nice lunch there. 

Our plan for the afternoon was to go swimming at the Aquatic Center in Lyman.  So after lunch we called the Aquatic Center to see if they had power.  There was no answer…Guess we won’t be swimming today.

After lunch we did run by the grocery store to pick up food for lunch and dinner for the next couple of days. 

Once we got back we just hung out around the trailer for the rest of the afternoon.  Avander brought a couple of plastic badminton rackets and shuttlecocks.  We did not have a net, but that did not stop us from pretending a net was there.  :)

Alex made some brownies for us to eat for dessert for tonight.

While I was cooking dinner I noticed Avander crying.  Tony talked to him and found out one of the badminton rackets had been broken and now he would not be able to play badminton with Papa.  So Mike/Papa went out and talked to him and told him they could play with our pickleball rackets instead.  That perked Van up.  So Mike/Papa pulled out our pickleball rackets and balls and they played with those instead.  That seemed to do the trick to make Avander happy again.  They volleyed the ball back and forth until dinner was ready and had a great time. 

 After dinner we played Uno.  It was a lot of fun.  After playing Uno, Mike got his .22 Henry Mini-Bolt out and spent some time with the kids teaching them about gun safety and the various parts of a bolt action rifle.

It was another wonderful day!