Jeffrey City - a legend in its time

the day following the eclipse was a bit of an anticlimax....we had quite a long driving day in front of us and it was hard to coordinate meeting up or travelling in convoy -as a consequence we lost each other and Fred and I stopped at Independence rock - the rock where the early pioneers stopped for rest as it was massive landmark and reaching there meant you would avoid the worst of the snows on your journey.  there were some great snippets from diaries posted telling the tales of life and death on the road - sadly more death then apple pies, it was a hard life - not quite the cruising along in a merc!!!

But  Andrew didn’t stop....which meant he spent 90 minutes waiting for us in the delightful town of Jeffrey City.  

We finally turned up and he was sat outside the Jeffrey City Split Rock Café, allegedly a legendary watering hole.  Jeffrey city was a thriving Uranium mining town at one point… with a population in the 1000's but slowly it emptied. In 2000 there was a population count of 104 people and by 2010 it had dropped to 58 -goodness knows who remains there now.  It's a sorry looking place, and the Split Rock Café has seen better days, I would like to say it was charming in its dilapidation but actually it was dirty, grimy and we were reluctant to eat there however legendary it was!! We had coffee and the chap serving us was drinking Budweiser in great gulps and his hands were shaking soooo bad.   Over the road was a pottery, which might have been interesting -  but we didn’t go look which I now regret but we were behind time and we still had some miles to put in.  

The whole place had the desolated air of a ghost town, a proper one – not like the tourist traps with fancy buildings done up and preserved – this was run down and falling down and people really lived there!

We carried on more or less in convoy, the scenery was spectacular Fred was just speechless at the massive dome rocks all along the landscape Passed Johnny behind the rocks which was a good name for a campsite and finally reached Lander where we were aiming to camp at the Sink Canyon.