After an overnight at Wind River RV Park and an early morning walk in Riverton, We headed east through the Wyoming landscape in search of a legend. Beginning in 1885 the young Harvard educated lawyer Owen Wister visited Medicine Bow, Wyoming for health reasons and like his college buddy, Teddy Roosevelt, became enchanted with the American West. He visited often an soon began writing fiction based on real experiences in The West. In 1898 he and his bride visited his Harvard classmate, Guy Waring, in the Methow Valley of Washington State. It was there when we visited the town of Winthrop last year, that we were reminded of Wister’s landmark work of fiction, The Virginian published in 1902. Karen and a friend were huge fans of the novel back in junior high. Steve remembers the television series. There’s also been a stage play, a Cecil B. DeMille movie, other movie versions, and a BBC Radio Drama. We both welcomed an opportunity to stop in Medicine Bow at The Virginian Hotel and enjoy a meal at The Eating House. We learned too late that there’s an RV Park behind the hotel. It would have been fun to be able to hang out and visit the little museums here, but truly it’s just fun to be in the locale where Wister set a number of his fictional events and to imagine life here in the 1890’s not to mention this place before the railroad.
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