GREEN RIVER AND WILD HORSES

GREEN RIVER, WY

Sunday, 1 June:

We were in Green River by Noon. As I went to the Oak Tree Inn to check in my friend Mark Rasmussen who was coordinating the upcoming photo adventure was there at the desk. Thus it was easy to be checked in, and then send George on his way to Ashton, ID where he will be visiting with our daughter, Klara. He was able to get on the road by about 1300 and had about a 260 mile drive.

By the time the rest of our group arrived, I had showered and been able to get my laundry done there at the motel. We did a sunset shoot of the formations right outside the Inn we were staying in.

WILD HORSES, GREEN RIVER WY.

Monday, 2 June: This morning we were off to see and photograph wild horses on the Prairie above Green River. Our guide was Rich Noble who has a permit to take groups out to the area. We were picked up a little after 0500 in a pintzgaur, which is an Austrian made troop carrier from the WWII era. This model was actually made in the 60’s and has an 85 horsepower VW engine!! You can go most anywhere with it. It was chilly as we started out as it has canvas walls which we had rolled up so that we could see better so it was an open air vehicle.

We found the wild horse and stayed with them for about 5 hours in the morning. There were several bunches of horses in the area, each with it’s own stallion in command. We saw a couple of mock charges by stallions, a number of mares, and about three young foals. One, the previous group had named Bandit, because of it’s marking around the eyes  that made him look like he had a mask on. As we were thinking about calling it a morning, there was a nice charge by two stallions which we all seemed to catch. These outbursts can last seconds or minutes. This one did not last long but it was still impressive.  As the day warmed up the activity seemed to slow down.

We went back to town for some breakfast/lunch about noon. Afterwards we had about an hour to get a short nap, which I did without too much trouble. It was a welcome rest. We met up again with our guide, Rich, and were off to the prairie once again at 1430. Rich found the horses pretty quickly, and after a little posturing for a good position we stayed with the horses for another three hours. They stayed to their normal routine, which was to be pretty docile in the warm afternoon. There were a couple of false charges and that was about it.

We called it a day about 1830 and headed to a butte where we looked straight down on the Town of Green River, and Rich pointed out the interesting area. Green River, WY, is a large railroad town with a very large railroad yard. This is in due to it having been great place to restock with water for the steam engines of the 1800’s.

Green River, A Railroad Hub

Once back at the Motel we were on our way to Pinedale, WY, where we spent the night. Along the way, we stopped in Rock Spring to have dinner, again at a Chinese Restaurant. This was chosen for the speed with which we could get our dinner at the buffet. It takes a long time to be served and eat when there are 10 people in the party. It can easily take 2.0 hours to be served and fed.

Sunset from the Car on Way to Pinedale, WY