Are We Lost?

Thursday afternoon we rolled into Buffalo, WY and parked just off of 90 East at Indian Campground and RV Park, a campground that, thank the stars, has extra long shaded pull-thoughs and properly-placed hookups.

As an added bonus, downtown Buffalo is walkable from the campground on a well-maintained gravel walking trail.

Yay exercise.

When we pulled into our site, our neighbors on the site beside us had also just arrived and were unhooking.

The woman asked me, “are you as lost as we are?” And went on to explain this was only the second time they’d used their camper, and they were fumbling over the setup process.

If you know anything about camping, there’s a whole long list of things you do after you get to a campground.  It’s not exactly plug and play.  There’s the unhooking and the leveling, the water, the sewer and the electric connections, the slides, the water heater, the Starlink…

And her comment made me pause for a second.

Are we lost?

We may have lost track of the days, for sure. We may have lost count of the places we’ve been.

But we surely are not lost.

In many ways, we have found our mojo. Our setup and teardown runs like a well-oiled machine.

And this trip is making us road-savvy.

Nay.

Road-worthy.

And yet, there’s an emotional cost that’s hard to explain.

Every place is unfamiliar. Every day comes with some weird, new problem to solve that we approach with an extra large dose of sarcasm. 

And occasional swearing.

But every so often, we need a break from it.

A place that feels easy.

A place where we can just... breathe.

Buffalo, WY was intentional. And arriving on a Thursday, also intentional.

Why?

We came because my father-in-law, Mr. Joe Rosenberry, said if there was any way we could make it to Buffalo on a Thursday, we’d get a chance to see the Thursday night jam session at the Occidental Hotel.

Every Thursday evening, a group of local musicians, young and old, gather and play. I don’t know if they get paid, but I suspect it wouldn’t matter. Some of them have been playing together at the Occidental every Thursday for twenty years.

And the place is just packed with locals and travelers alike. Not an empty seat.

They play what I’d call old-school country/bluegrass. Guitars, banjos, a piano, a stand-up bass, harmonicas, an accordion.

A very enthusiastic percussionist played all sorts of unusual instruments.

And while it may not be my favorite style of music, there is something so oddly soothing about it. The sweet, old songs. The funny and sad stories of the lyrics.

The music was like a warm blanket, and the beer was perfectly cold. And for two hours we just RELAXED.

And then the most profoundly unusual thing happened at the end of the night.

The entire saloon stood up, formed a circle, held hands and sang Amazing Grace together.

You’ve got to be kidding me. 

What is this strange, expectation-defying place we've found?

You can’t assume anything anymore.

We walked the twenty minute path back to our campground, and we stopped in the middle of that little trail and reflected.

Would we ever do this again? This long of a trip. This intense of a trip.

And I think the answer is yet to come.

Today, we’re bound for Sturgis, SD for our final three-day stay before we micro-hop our way back to Pennsylvania.