Wyoming

My birthdays tend to be fairly low-key, but I always find a way to make them special.

This year, I planned to celebrate my birthday and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I requested days off back in August with every intention of going. The date snuck up on me and by the time I shopped for plane tickets, they were through the roof.

At the same time, my friend Cat decided to visit. So I kept two of the days and made plans to show off Casper and Wyoming and celebrate my birthday. On the actual day (March 3), we hung around Casper and did some of my favorite things: drove up the mountain, walked around my neighborhood, bought good cheeses and sipped my favorite Malbec of the moment.

On Friday, I finished a quick story (it wouldn’t be a day off if I didn’t work some) and we drove through a light snow to Lander. We planned to go snowshoeing in Sinks Canyon, but the warm, sunny day turned the snow to mush. We went anyway.

Slightly frozen Popo Agie River [March 4, 2011]

Snowshoeing in Sinks Canyon [March 4, 2011]

Melting snow = muddy unpaved roads and parking lots. New rule for Lola: No wet gravel.

Trying to get up the hill. [March 4, 2011]

We’re both resourceful, strong women, so we eventually made it out through breaking up the slush, laying grass in front of the tires and pushing hard.

Our cozy accommodations for the night made the trouble worth it: log furniture, wood-burning stove and llamas. We stayed at the Bunk House at the Lander Llama Company.

We celebrated Friday night with dinner (birthday dessert!) at Cowfish and a drink at the Lander Bar. The real celebration was planned for Saturday. My sister drove north to Fort Collins and another grad school friend, Steve, drove south from Gillette, his new home of six weeks.

Casper friends met us out for drinks and karaoke. I sang my one song (“I will survive”) and was convinced to sing a duet with Jeremy. He chose a Casper karaoke favorite, “Bring me to life” by Evanescence. I was the dude. Fun times. And fun pictures, thanks to talented photographer friends.

“WAKE ME UP!” (photo courtesy of Steve Remich)

As far as birthdays go, it was one of the best. I felt so loved and lucky to have crossed paths with such great people. It’s such a happy coincidence when worlds collide harmoniously. Casper often feels so far from, well, everything, but this weekend it felt like the center of the universe.

Legislative and government reporting accounts for about 10 percent of what I do.

Since this session began, that amount has quadrupled.

Tons of education bills have been introduced, and I covered most of them from the front end with individual stories or a 70-inch legislative preview. From Casper, 2.5 hours away from the Capitol. Now that they’re working their way through both houses, I’ve had more difficulty and had to pass the baton to our statehouse reporters.

But that doesn’t mean I’m done with it. On Monday, I wrapped up a story about national interests lobbying state lawmakers and the public. I broke news on Tuesday after listening to Senate debate through a live audiocast online. I spent much of last week working on two longer pieces — a profile of a teacher/legislator and a bigger take on “teacher tenure” in the state.

When I interviewed for this job, the editor warned me it requires a great deal of reporting via telephone. Good thing I got over my fear of the cold call a long time ago because almost all of my state reporting is done on the phone.

Today’s stories certainly reflect that — records received over the phone,  e-mail and fax machine (!), long chats with a profile subject while he was driving, multiple sources hours away in Cheyenne and Cody. Most of the color came from first-hand observation during committee meetings and my trip to Cheyenne two weeks ago.

Whew, my name fit on the badge. [Wyo. Capitol, Jan. 31]

I happened to be driving through Cheyenne (from my weekend in Colorado) on a Monday morning so I stopped at the Capitol, listened to testimony during a committee meeting, did some interviews and wrote a story before continuing on to Casper. I never thought reporting from Casper was hard, but being in the building where everything happens made it feel so easy. Instead of waiting hours for a lawmaker to return my call, I could send a note to the floor and wait outside.

The capitol reporters are there for the day-to-day stuff, and I’m able to work on more in-depth stuff like today’s teacher-legislature package:
- Tussle over tenure: Few Wyoming teachers challenge dismissals
–> Teachers speak in defense of tenure
- Profile: Harshman teaches, leads in Legislature

A source thanked me last week for doing “more investigative stuff.” I said thanks, but I really owe it to my editors who take an interest in the stories and give me the time and support I need to pursue them.

Has it really been more than a week since Christmas?

Clint checks the turkey. It was done. [Dec. 25]

Christmas truly has become a season for me, beginning the day after Thanksgiving when I buy and wrap 90 percent of my gifts and ending a week into January when cards and packages stop trickling in. The weeks in between offer parties, treats and warm, fuzzy moments that make you say, “It feels like Christmas.”

The guys might kill me for writing this, but Christmas night had several of those moments. Two sports guys hosted the journalist orphans for turkey with all the fixin’s.

It’s not Christmas without oysters.

It seemed Christmas was white everywhere but this part of Wyoming. Everyone else got snow except us.

The dry weather helped me get down to Colorado and Arizona, to continue on to Missouri and Kansas. It also allowed me to return safely to a very snowy Casper.

The week away was eventful and uneventful at the same time. Arizona was all about the Insight Bowl, but Josh and I also explored Phoenix, spent time with the illustrious Ryan Gibbons, shopped used book stores, hiked through a cactus forest and visited the new Musical Instrument Museum.

Phoenix Mountains Preserve [Dec. 30, 2010]

In Missouri we both worked New Year’s Eve — I finished a 50-inch legislative preview and he compiled a “best of” photo gallery in the car. We both have a hard time not working during vacations.

Friends hosted a casual New Year’s Eve dinner of fondue and champagne before we shuffled to the Power and Light District. We only stayed long enough to watch an imitation ball drop and greedy people dive after cash confetti shot from cannons. Just like last year, we were in PJs, eating pizza before 2.

Also like last year, we spent New Year’s Day lounging on the couch, watching the Jersey Shore marathon.

Holidays don’t have to be extravagant to be celebrated. Vacation doesn’t have to be exciting to be vacation.

Hanukkah has come and gone, celebrated with good friends and an excellent brisket/latke dinner.

mmm latkes, best with homemade applesauce.

This will be the second year of my mail-order Christmas, with various packages arriving every few days. Last year, I put them under the tree for a couple days until my mom told me I should just open them.

My first gift came Wednesday but before I could open it, I made myself clean and finish decorating. The snowman bell door hanger never made it off the doorknob, so the 3-foot tree and wreath were all I had to do. Also, I keep the lights and ornaments on the tree when it goes in the box for the rest of the year. Low maintenance decorating always preferred. I’d rather spend my free time baking goodies for the newsroom.

I didn’t bake these. But I helped decorate and eat them!

These I did make: Kolaczki for a coworker who pined for a Polish bakery.

Last Christmas was the first I didn’t spend with family in Illinois. Plane tickets out of Casper were ridiculously expensive and I didn’t have enough days off to make a trek down to the Denver airport worth it.

I drove to New Mexico and you know what, it was fine. I missed the family time, but there was enough Christmas (snow, fires in the fireplace, gingerbread houses) to make it memorable.

Christmas and New Year’s Day are on weekends this year, which means I can take them in the same week. And Josh happens to have some of those days off, too. A Christmas miracle! Because if there’s anything harder than a journalist trying to take vacation it’s a journalist trying to take vacation around another journalist’s vacation schedule.

For that reason, the best I could do was Wyoming for Christmas, Tempe for the Mizzou/Iowa bowl game and somewhere in Kansas for New Year’s Eve. It’d be nice if there was some snow in there.

I have a hard time getting back to the grind when I miss a weekday. No matter how relaxing the time away, I feel like I always miss something, have to play catch-up.

Which explains why I finally unpacked and am posting about last weekend tonight (got back Monday).

Last weekend was wonderful. Josh flew into Casper on Friday night and we drove to Jackson on Saturday morning. We shopped, ate, shopped more, warmed up in the heated pool, hiked, ate, hiked again and ate a couple more times.

It’s been unseasonably warm, in the 50s and 60s. Jackson is in off-season mode until Thanksgiving, which meant we got a killer rate on a four-star hotel and ate very well for very little.

We arrived in time to see the Capitol Christmas Tree leave Bridger-Teton National Forest and begin its 20-day trek to D.C. [Nov. 6]

The timing really was perfect — right after an election week, warm, off-season, dry weather for driving — except the road to Jenny Lake was closed for between-season maintenance. We thought about renting bikes for the 8 mile trek, but the rental shop was closed.

We settled for a 1.6 mile trail to Taggart Lake. A little more than a mile in, we met some moose on the trail — seven to be exact.

Yes, we were this close. [Nov. 7]

I was a little nervous. I’d heard stories about angry moose and I didn’t want to take my chances. But, when you travel with a photographer, running from beautiful wildlife set against the background of the Tetons is not an option — at least not at first.

After a few minutes, we walked toward the lake only to be stopped by a bull who had been eating further down the path.

He stared at us. We stared at him. And then we turned around.

Now we were surrounded by the herd. So we stayed and took more pictures. Eventually, they moved south of the trail. The last two — two large bulls — walked right in front of us and locked antlers. We swore they paused at one point to look at us. This wasn’t their first show.

We finished the hike and made it to the lake before there were too many late-morning ripples.

Quiet. Beautiful. [Nov. 7]

We refueled over a large brunch at homey Cafe Genevieve. With the Sunday New York Times covering most of the table and jazz oozing from the ceiling, I felt like I was brunching in New Orleans.

We passed on the bottomless mimosas (which we wouldn’t have done in New Orleans) because we had another hike planned west of where the road was closed. The afternoon hike wasn’t as eventful as the first but full of scenery and sounds of nature.

Another perk of the off-season: Few tourists in the park and none visible on the trails. For a few hours, the Tetons belonged to us.