Copper Days Festival 2010 | Antique Tractors and More

The Wyoming Tourism Center has released the scheduling for 2010 events and featured  Copper Days Festival at Encampment/Riverside here in Wyoming.

The Festival features a parade of antique machinery and cars, most particularly TRACTORS.  The tractors and small engines, old equipment and toys are on display while tractor pulls are major entertainment for visitors.   There is a good, old-fashioned melodrama for indoor entertainment put on by some extremely good actors living in the community.

I am a tractor and farm toy collector, so I’m ‘deep’ into Copper Days and know that you would enjoy every bit of it.

Call Riverside Lodge today to make reservations for your antique visit to the Sierra Madre Mountain Range and the Medicine Bow National Forest.

Paxton and Farr Treking in Argentina | Contemplating Paths of the Wild Bunch

Wyoming might easily be another way to spell “H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. The background stories and tales of the old days are thicker than fleas on a dog and they are about real people.

Just as Wyoming is an historic area, the rest of the WORLD goes round.

When you are visiting the community around Riverside Lodge, you will be shoulder to shoulder with people who have visited history and tracked the history of Wyoming all around the world to Argentina, following the paths of the infamous team, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

In the December 13, 2009 edition of The Argentine Post, an article by John D. Farr reminisces about the Wild Bunch in Wyoming and Argentina. Farr spends part of his time in Encampment, where he visits friends, including Jerry Paxton, Encampment resident and Carbon County Commissioner. Farr spends the rest of his time in Argentina at Junin de Los Andes and Patagonia, where he traveled with Paxton this fall as they through the back roads of the Andes.

Farr’s interesting article tells of the visit to a cabin that is historically connected to Butch Cassidy. There is a photo of that cabin, plus other spots where Cassidy and company were supposed to have been. There is an excellent photo of one assortment of the Wild Bunch that has a much brighter looking group than some photos present. Maybe the photographer had a better monkey than others.

Check out the link to a news source from the other side of the equator which is linked historically with Wyoming. Did the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy survive their ventures into South America and return to the US to become quiet old men? Farr thinks so.

You can participate in the continuing history of Wyoming by visiting the state, the mountains and making yourself very comfortable at Riverside Lodge. Call 307-710-5660  today for your reservations.

Riverside Lodge | Visit Tough Country Nature

A few years ago, Gay Day Alcorn wrote a history book about this area entitled Tough country: The history of the Saratoga and Encampment Valley, 1825-1895 The high desert around the Sierra Madre Mountain Range is TOUGH country, beautiful and wild.  These characteristics are part of the attraction for guests at Riverside Lodge.

A recent article in the Casper Star Tribune about the wilderness around the Sierra Madre Mountain Range entitled “New Help for Beetle Fight” outlines some steps being proposed to control one of Natures little varmints, the bark beetle.   The bark beetle is considered to be responsible for timber destruction in over 2.5 million acres in the Rocky Mountain area.  Of the forests affected, the Medicine Bow NF seems to be the hardest hit.

Nature is TOUGH and one of the principles of multi-use management is to intervene when the wild things become destructive to the ecological system.  Intervention with the bark beetle has been too slow, but any intervention would be better than none.  We want our forests to be managed for the enjoyment and prosperity of the guests who come to Riverside Lodge.