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A hideout for intrepid hikers, horned lizards,and wild horses
Photos Courtesy of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance
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“Wild horses,” Erik Molvar alerts us, and then hustles ahead for a better view, as the horses vanish behind sage-covered dunes. Before we can grab a camera, we suddenly see two adults and a colt galloping straight at us. I feel cast into a scene from one of my favorite childhood movies, The Man from Snowy River, where the wild horses are as much the stars as the Australian cowboys rounding them up. The horses halt less than fifty yards away, stare us down, and then run off along the Skull Creek Rim, back the way we came. Their curiosity,
Molvar says, motivated the close encounter.
Curiosity is what motivated my own visit to Adobe Town. Ever notice the blank spot on Wyoming maps, the void just south and a little west of Wamsutter, where you are more likely to find the state logo of the bucking horse than any hint of geographic detail? This is where Adobe Town sits. Not a town at all, but a badlands maze, home to towering hoodoos, wild horses, prehistoric-looking lizards, and colorful spring wildflowers.
Its remote location may explain why Adobe Town has a history as a desert hideaway for outlaws and whiskey smugglers, rumored to have stashed horses and moonshine among its ravines. Such isolation makes it hard on hikers who want to visit. So I signed up for one of the spring field trips, offered in May and June, by the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie. Our trip leader, Molvar, is a wildlife biologist with the Alliance, a seasoned hiker and prolific guidebook author, who knows his way around Adobe Town. After talking with Molvar on the phone, I decided this hostile Death Valley-like environment is no place to go it alone.
So on a Saturday in May, my friend, filmmaker Melinda Binks, and I meet Molvar and a dozen field trip participants mid-morning at the Bitter Creek exit (Exit 142) in a nondescript dirt lot along Interstate 80. Molvar shares a few unsettling stories about flat tires and how long it can take to self-rescue once you descend into the Red Desert. Then we’re off, a caravan of high-clearance vehicles, rolling down the hard-pan roads, which can just as easily turn to gumbo with spring rain. We have our sunglasses, sunscreen, sun hats, and rain gear, suggested “just in case.”
We’re glad to be following Molvar down the Bitter Creek Road (County 19), past the Eversole Ranch to an unmarked Bureau of Land Management road. Signage is slim, making it easy to lose your way. After passing by an abandoned ranch, we finally arrive at Skull Creek Rim, dropping a few cars at our destination and then backtracking to the start of our walk. We’re a mixed group, a mother and daughter from Colorado, a retired couple from one of Wyoming’s tiny towns, and a radio reporter from Casper, to name a few.
We follow an old jeep trail to the rim. Molvar points out our first wildlife sighting—a greater short-horned lizard. About the size of a cell phone, this well-armored lizard looks like a miniature triceratops minus the horns and with more frog-like legs. Watching the spiny creature, I begin to imagine the Eocene epoch when rhinoceros-like mammals called uintatheres, primitive horses, camels, and other prehistoric creatures were thought to have thrived here in a subtropical climate akin to the Florida Everglades.
