- Joined
- Dec 1, 2020
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Big WYO, Bless. While we lament what America used to be and what places or regions used to have, Wyoming still is and does. The greatest experiences and memories of my childhood (if not my entire life) were the family road trips to camp in and explore the Wyo wilderness.
It's so raw and savage that Montana has twice the population; there are more people living in fucking Alaska than Wyoming, lol. It sits dead last at #50 with 587k residents (California has over 67x the population with 39.4 million), and only the state of Delaware receives fewer annual visitors. The demographics and politics are the most "mighty white, mighty right" in the country and violent crime is low, but suicide deaths and traffic fatality rates are more than twice the national average and often clock in at #1. The former is largely due to desolation and severe lack of amenities and services; the latter on account of insane blizzards, snow drifts, icy roads, wildlife collisions, and ceaseless wind with 60+ mph gusts that regularly blow commercial diesel trucks over on the highway.
The physiography is just baffling: You read about the Great Plains, but Wyoming has the High Plains with enormous swaths of prairie land that is actually higher in elevation than the peaks of the Appalachian mountain range of the eastern United States. But then the soil chemistry changes to produce dense sub-alpine forests and meadows inhabited by bison, moose, elk, grizzly bears, and gray wolves before slamming into the Central Rockies.
People will say Yellowstone is too crowded despite the fact that 97% of the park is undeveloped, 99% of visitors never wander more than a quarter-mile from their car, and the most remote location in the contiguous United Stares (Thorofare) is within the park's official boundaries, but okay. So try the Absaroka or Bridger Wilderness where all commercial activity, industrial development, mechanized equipment, and motor transportation are outright prohibited.
