Heritage Gateways

Wendy Westergard Journals

June 21, 1997

Location: Jeffrey City, Wyoming

Summary: to Jeffrey city----lots of mosquitos

Journal entry: We walked 17 miles today. It was a sunny day. The firs part was on the original trail. It was neat experience to suffer the mosquitos on the same trail that pioneers of old (mormon trail, Oregon trail, California) trail. The mosquitos were as thick as a cloud. We look now like we have a bad chicken pox case.

Jeffrey city has an large amount of mosquitos. It is hard not to go nuts as you have so many biting you all the time. I don't know how the people who live here can do it. It is a beautiful area with beautiful surroundings, but the mosquitos are bad. They have a place in the donations in the gas station so that their kids can play outside this summer.

Luckily as we were walking the middle half of the day the wind was blowing, so the mosquitos were not a problem. We arrived into Jeffrey city and there waiting for us was a warm welcome. Everyone has been so nice. Someone even donated dinner for the people on the wagon train. They have let us use their school for showers. Their school is really nice. I was impressed. The shower felt so good. I hadn't had a shower since Sunday. It felt like heaven. After I got out of the showers I put on normal clothes. My authentic clothes were a mile away and I didn't want to walk more to get them.

It felt really weird to wear normal clothes. "I looked down at my legs and saw levis. It looked so foreign. I'm so used to seeing a big flowing skirt. It also felt weird to walk and nothing was brushing against my legs. It was also weird that I wasn't as wide as when I wore the skirts. It was weird to switch centuries.

That evening we truly went back into our own century. We went to Riverton to see the new Batman. It was really good. We had to travel an hour there. We listened to good music. We had a huge group go of people that have been out here the whole time. We even had hung out and bonded with new people.

Everyday we become closer and closer. The threads of our group are tying themselves into a beautiful quilt. It will be the most amazing moment when we walk into the valley. I am already excited, yet apprehensive. I don't want the is experience to end. We have realized that this wonderful trek is slowly come to a close. I don't want it to end, yet I want to go into valley---not yet though.

When we travelled to Riverton we could see the rocky mountains in the distance. They looked so forboding. They looked so big. they are going to be really tough. We will really have to work together to go over these huge and beautiful mountains. It exiting yet I'm a little nervous too.