Lake Cameahwait: In Sacajawea's Home Valley
After the crowds and cold of Yellowstone and the Tetons, we did something radical: we dropped into the Wind River country of central Wyoming and parked by the water. The maps call this arm of Boysen Reservoir by a name we love - Lake Cameahwait - and the story behind that name is one of the best in the American West. This stop was five nights of wind, mayflies, pronghorn fawns, and history, and we would do it again tomorrow.
The Setting
We came down from the mountains chasing warmer weather and found it - plus wind. This is big, open country where the Wind River spreads out into Boysen Reservoir before squeezing through Wind River Canyon, and the same geography that funnels the river funnels the breeze: our first days brought gusts over 35 mph that rocked the trailer pretty good. We rode it out. The trade was worth it: temperatures far kinder than the passes, a free and quiet camp, and evenings with nothing on the schedule.
The wildlife showed up the way it does when you least expect it. Three pronghorn fawns bedded down about thirty yards off the back of the trailer for an afternoon and evening - gone by morning, never seen again, and better for it. And then there were the mayflies. For two days they mobbed the rig, thick enough that no spot on the white exterior stayed clear. When I mentioned it to Alan, he explained the trick of it: mayflies are attracted to the color white. Our rig was, apparently, the most attractive thing on the reservoir.
The Name on the Water
Lake Cameahwait honors the Shoshone chief whose sister is the most famous woman of the American West: Sacajawea. Her people, the Agaidika - the Salmon Eater band of the Shoshone - ranged this country, and the Wind River valley just upstream became the homeland of the Eastern Shoshone. Here is the part of her story that lives closest to this lake: kidnapped as a girl and carried far from the Rockies, she walked back into history as the interpreter and guide of the Lewis and Clark expedition - and when the desperate Americans needed horses from the Shoshone in 1805, the chief who agreed to help turned out to be her own brother, Cameahwait. Without that reunion, there is no crossing of the Bitterroots, and the story of the expedition looks very different.
And her trail ends here, too. Sacajawea lived her later years with the Wind River Shoshone and is buried in the valley at Fort Washakie, a run up the road from our camp - one of the tradition-held resting places of the most traveled woman in American history. The valley that lost her and got her back keeps her still.
The Days Here
Between wind events, we took a long bike ride around the lake - half a mile from camp we were on Boysen Reservoir proper, riding with Cindy's back doing halfway decent, hopeful math for more riding ahead. I got time-lapse video of the shoreline, the red-rock hills, and the water gone bronze at dusk. It was the rare stop with nothing to prove and nowhere to rush: free, quiet, and full of stories.
We would come back in a heartbeat. The wind can come, too. We know how to ride it out.