➡  Richie from Jailbreak Overlander takes us on a journey through Wyoming, focusing on the town of Ten Sleep and the Bighorn Mountains. He showcases the stunning landscapes, wildlife, and the unique history of the area, including its Native American origins and the last recorded conflict between cattlemen and sheep growers. The area is popular with rock climbers and is home to a variety of farms, despite the challenging desert conditions. The video also highlights the importance of water in sustaining life in this arid region.
➡ The author shares his adventurous journey up a mountain, where he encounters challenging terrains, beautiful landscapes, and interesting wildlife. He uses a drone to explore areas he can’t reach, like caves that emit cold air. He also meets a shepherd tending to his flock and admires an old, well-constructed bridge. Despite the challenges, he enjoys the trip and captures it all on his drone.

Welcome back to another episode of Jailbreak Overlander. I’m Richie, and this is Jailbreak. And when most people think about Wyoming, they think about wild bill Cody. 80 mile an hour speed limits, wide open expanses of nothing but badlands and turkey vultures hanging around waiting for their next victim. And that’s pretty much true. I don’t. I don’t disagree with that. But other than the wide open spaces, if you know where to look, you’ll find oases where the there’s pivots pumping water onto the farmland and unbelievable scenery and terrain that you won’t find anyplace else. I went through great pains to videotape all of this.

In 4K, you’re going to see some stuff that you probably didn’t know existed in Wyoming. And I’m going to talk about a town called Ten Sleep, which is the gateway to the Bighorn Mountains. It’s a pretty interesting story and you’re going to want to see this. So sit back, relax, and check this out. So here we go. This is Wyoming. Big skies, open expanses, amazing mountain valley, roads usually with a river or a train track. Large mountain animals, big horns, moose, deer, pronghorns, beautiful rivers, creeks, waterfalls, absolutely everywhere if you know where to look for them.

This river right here is at about 10,000ft and it was awesome. To get to all this, you have to go through a town called Ten Sleep. This tiny town with a population of under 200 people has its own rodeo, which is really cool. The town’s name, Tensley, allegedly came from the Native Americans, and it took 10 nights or 10 sleeps to make it through this valley to Montana. That’s the story, and I’m sticking with it. The main street is basically all there is, and they cater to Sturgis bike week and rock climbers. Lots and lots of people migrate here in the summertime to climb the rock faces, and we’ll get to that.

But this is the town in its entirety. Small town, awful lot like the old west if you can get past most people wearing face masks. I didn’t wear a face mask. That’s just all there is to it. But at any rate, right before you head into the mountains, you come to this rest stop right here, which is phenomenal. You’ll see lots of van life people, hikers, overlanders, and rock climbers aplenty. This welcome center is your last stop before you head into the Bighorns and you start doing a climb from 5,000 up to 9,300ft. It’s a beautiful little oasis in the middle of the desert.

They’ve got a beautiful fountain right here. There was lots of kids playing in it, big open grass field, picnic tables. It’s a good time to go through your camera equipment, check your clothing, check your gear, make sure you have gas, etc. And again, it was about 100 degrees, so that was. That fountain was a welcome sight. And it’s incredibly common to see again, rock climbers absolutely everywhere. Stretching out, preparing, getting ready. I noticed a lot of them were doing yoga, etc. Because once you climb up those rock faces, you’re on your own, straight up. And the shape that some of these people were in was incredible.

This young lady was doing some calisthenics or stretching before she hit the mountain. But I mean, that’s serious. Those are rock climbers. Unbelievable. Now this is a desert area, the badlands, mountainous, arid and dry. But any place you see a farm, you know that they’re either pumping water in or there’s a river close by. There’s farm animals all up and down the road that lead up to the Bighorn Mountains. And there’s some old buildings, farmhouses and structures that are just unbelievable. It’s a photographer’s dream come true. As long as you can deal with the heat, the dust and the wind.

And sadly there were wildfires going on. So the smoke was also an issue. But still, it was just phenomenal to see all this. These people live in a very difficult part of the country and they still make it work. These are the farmers that bring the vegetables to your supermarkets. Anywhere there’s water, you’ll find life nearby. And fortunately in this area, the Ten Sleep river and another river, the name escapes me, run right through the middle of it, bringing life. It’s amazing stuff. So let’s get into a little history. At the base of the Bighorn Mountains, 26 miles east of Worland, Wyoming, there’s a town called Ten Sleep.

Now there’s several stories on how this small town got its name and I already went over that. The Native Americans 10 sleeps 10 nights to make it through that valley to Montana. So we got that. There’s another story that relates to a large Indian camp on the Platte river near the present site of Casper, Wyoming, which was known to the early trappers as the old Sioux camp. To the north, near the present site of Bridger, Montana, on Clark’s Fork river, was another large and well known Indian camp. These were both important crossroads of the nation and trails led from them in all directions.

Halfway between the two was 10 sweep. The Indians measured the distance by the number of sleeps, which was 10 between the two camps. So there you go. Now, the last recorded armed conflict between cattlemen and sheep growers occurred in the no Wood Valley at Spring Camp, seven miles southeast of ten Sleep. In the quote unquote Spring Creek raid, seven masked riders raided Joe Alleman sheep camp, killing Alleman, his nephew Joe Lazier and Jules Meg and burning their two sheep wagons. The raid was supposedly motivated by elements bringing his herd of 5, 000 sheep into the Nood Valley, which cattle entrance cattle interest had declared off limits to sheep.

Crazy stuff, right? And they still, shepherds still bring massive herds of sheep through here. And in this video you’ll see that because I ran across them several times. It’s pretty amazing to think that at 10,000, 10,000ft up there’s a shepherd with four dogs and thousands of head of sheep. And that’s his job all by himself. I met one of these guys, so you’ll see that. At any rate, enjoy the view. Foreign so In March of 1909, Herbert Brink, Tommy Dixon, Milton Alexander and George Henry Sabin and Ed Keaton, local cowboys, were brought to trial in Basin, Wyoming for participation in the killings.

Two others, Charles Ferris, Albert Keys, turned state’s evidence and were not charged. Brink was convicted of first degree murder. Alex and Sabin were convicted of second degree murder. Dixon and Eaton each pled guilty to arson. Eaton died in state custody. Sabin escaped in 1913 and was never recaptured. Dixon was paroled in 1912. Brink and Alexander were paroled in 1914. The public reaction to the raid resulted in the ending of such violence on the open range. There’s a historical marker that now sits on the site of the raid. The Spring Creek raid was not the only incident of such violence.

It was merely the last. These days, travelers approaching the big friendly Bighorn Mountains from the east have an abundance of campgrounds, picnic areas, lodges, fishing holes and wildlife viewing and recreational opportunities. And I’m going to show you a lot of that in this particular video. This video is going to be long. It’s going to be drone footage heavy because that’s what you guys asked for and that’s what I’m going to give you. So the buildings and the structures are amazing. These are old School, early 1900s buildings, as far as I can tell. And again, out in the middle of the desert, out in the middle of the Badlands, as they call them, as long as there’s water, there’s life, and some of the trees out there are in amazingly good condition.

With massive trunks. Stuff you don’t see back on the east coast necessarily. One thing you do see are springs or wells, artesian wells. Wherever these come up, you’ll find a farm right next to it. And more than likely there’ll be a massive pivot, which are those giant, giant sprinkler systems. Like I said, even in the middle of nowhere, life finds a way as long as there’s water. And fortunately, being at the, being in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, all the snow pack and all the rain water flows straight down. This is some of the purest water you’re going to get until it ends up on one of these farms.

Because sadly, farmers all over the country in the world are using Monsanto brand chemicals, etc, and it’s just not good for anybody. But it’s astounding that surrounded by sagebrush, tumbleweeds and badlands, you find these massive oasis of barley, corn, etc, growing in the middle of nowhere. It’s pretty phenomenal and it makes for epic video. So here you go. Wherever there aren’t massive fields of green, there are old structures. Now this one is probably one of the most pictured structures in the entire town because there’s a horse that stands out here all day and I guess he’s a real hambone because people stop and pet him and take pictures.

So he’s pretty famous. Now, right before you head up into the mountains, you’ll find this campground. And these are all the rock climbers from out of state. All types of people come in here. This isn’t where I camp. I camp way up the mountain away from people. But I did pull in here to meet with a few people and check a few things out, you know what I’m saying? Lots to see. And I got footage of it. There was some pretty hardcore trucks like my own down here, but only a couple. Now, you take this road instead of taking the highway and it brings you up the old highway, they call it.

The old highway brings you up a dirt road right up that mountain pass. And these are the rocks all those people at this campground come to climb. Now, there’s people up there right now. The camera’s just not necessarily picking it up. These are steep, these are straight. And they go up about 2 to 3,000ft in some places. Now, a buddy of mine And a fellow YouTuber, Mike Decker, he’s been climbing these mountains since he was a kid. And there are caves up there that literally give out cold air, like a freezer. You can keep bare, you can keep your water.

It’s Amazing. Unfortunately, at my age and in my fitness level, I wasn’t climbing that to see the caves, but I do know how to fly a drone, so it’s the next best thing for me. Again, water is the lifeblood of this place and fortunately it flows in many places. It’s amazing that humans, a lot of women, a lot of men come here every year to climb these rocks. It takes some serious nerves of steel because once you start, it’s on, it’s on. These are straight up bluffs and just so you can see the size of it, that’s a big truck with a big trailer.

At any rate, I’m taking the old dirt road up and you help you go through gates. You have to close the gates behind you so that the free roaming cattle don’t get out. It’s a big, big area. It’s beautiful. And from the air it looks so much the better. So like I said, you guys asked for more drone footage, I’ll give it to you. I’m flying this drone and I can barely see it half the time. There was a cave on the other side of this river that I wanted to go into, but unfortunately the bottom of the water was incredibly rocky.

Large, large slippery rocks, and the water was about 4 foot deep in one spot. And I just decided it just wasn’t worth it because nobody was around, nobody knew where I was, and it would have been horrible if I got hurt, especially with me getting hurt having them close down the park or something. So the next best thing was to fly the drone in there. Now, a GoPro, if you put it in a cave, would will still video. Unfortunately, The Mavic Air 2 did not. It was dark in there. I’m inside a cave, I can’t even see the drone.

But I still managed to get it back out again. It was a good sized cave and I’d like to have seen what was in there. I think I’m going to strap a light to the drone on the top so I can illuminate it a little better next time. But at any rate, enjoy this. This is some seriously epic foot sa. So before I packed up the drone for the day, I wanted to give you an idea of what it felt like walking through this river. This river is coming right down from the top of the Bighorn Mountains and it is unbelievably cold.

So I thought I’d do a little daredevil maneuvers with the drone. And hopefully you enjoy it because it’s pretty sick. It’s hard to do this, but I’m getting Pretty good with a drone. Foreign. Now, I really wanted to go check this cave out myself and it was possibly doable, but it’s incredibly steep. It’s about 400 foot off the ground. And if I did happen to take a fall, not only do you fall down the cliff like an idiot, but you land in the middle of the highway. So what could possibly go wrong? So once again, I launched the drone.

I can barely see it and I did manage to, well, take a look. The drone has a small LED light on the bottom, which I did turn on. It illuminates a little bit, but not very much. So I will be modifying the drone like I modify everything else. We need to see what’s in these caves. If you have a sharp eye, you can look to the left and notice there’s a large deposit of quartz in the rock itself. It’s amazing. And a friend of mine who’s a climber said chances are there’s probably old cave wall drawings inside these as they’re incredibly abundant in this area as our fossils and quote unquote dinosaur tracks.

It’s pretty epic. It’s an amazing spot, the Bighorn Mountains. I’m glad I decided to finally make the trek. After I finished up in that canyon, I continued heading up the dirt road that I was originally on and found myself on some really, really nasty roads. I had been there before. It was no big deal, but I wanted to see these magnificent trees from the sky. At altitude, the conifers or the pine trees that you’re looking at are entirely different than what you usually see. I believe these are ponderosa pines. As I am out on the ponderosa, the ground is covered with moss.

It’s, it’s, it’s like a fairy tale that you’re actually walking in. It’s amazing. You come across herds of sheep, bighorn moose and elk. A whole herd of elk walked in front of my truck first thing in the morning. And I was too. I had just woken up. I didn’t have a camera ready and sadly, I’ve yet to catch any more. So I’m still working on it now. This was the way out. I’m at the top of the mountain. I’m almost out of the woods, so to speak. But the trail is incredibly tight and it’s very, very rocky.

It’s really difficult to capture how difficult the road is for the vehicle with a camera. I’ve tried from every angle, I’ve tried from every perspective. It just does not show it. And for all you over overlanders and off roaders you’re well aware of this. Like right now I’m climbing up a steep incline over rocks that are half the size of my 37 inch tires or 3 foot diameter tires. So keep that in mind. Now the one roadblock that did show up, that did slow me down was running into a shepherd, his dogs in 2000 head of sheep at 10,000ft.

Nobody around and all you can hear is the bleating of the sheep. Sheep non stop. It took quite a while as this was a massive flock. And if you look keenly to the right hand side, you’ll notice the large great Pyrenees that comes running up and barks at me. It was quite the trip. I had never seen such a thing. I didn’t even realize shepherds were still real. I gave the kid a hundred dollars, some white cheddar cheese and some fried chicken and he was incredibly gracious. He was from Peru and found himself in Wyoming tending to a flock of sheep for six months out of the year.

So yeah, that’s still a thing. It so I’m out of there, my trip is basically done. And as I’m driving out, I happen to notice this bridge to my left hand side. And from a distance it looked like a crappy old bridge. But when I pulled up I realized this was the real deal. This was probably built by cowboys way back in the old days because the construction was phenomenal, the hardware was antique. Antique. And this bridge, literally it was the bridge to bring one side of the Ponderosa to the other. And without this, the sheep would get stuck on one side of the river or the other.

The construction was phenomenal. It was like artwork in the middle of no place. And it was designed in such a way as to funnel the sheep over the bridge down to the other side so they could continue grazing. And apparently sheep eat a serious amount of grass according to the shepherd. So I thought it was incredibly amazing. And it was. Well, that’s the end of my story. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you hit that like Share and Subscribe Leave a comment and I will return the favor. I am out.
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