Bed & Breakfast Inns and Ranches of Wyoming

Books are available for only $10.00 plus $3.50 S/H.  Please contact us by email or write WHOA, 671 Steinle Rd, Douglas, WY  82633.   You can also pay via PayPal using dk@rswyoming.com

Front Cover

Wyoming Hospitality and Outdoor Adventures wanted to create a guide to Wyoming that would be small scale, intimate and personal . . . and one that would include all the special recipes from our unique lodgings.  In setting ourselves this goal, we face a paradox because Wyoming is not always an intimate, small scale, or personal kind of place.  Wyoming is grand, majestic, and often harsh.  Vast areas are even now uninhabited, and the rest of the state supports only a thin veneer of civilization.  As a land mass, Wyoming has very low tolerance for human beings.

Growing up on a Wyoming cattle ranch, I had little idea that Wyoming citizenship was a privilege, and even less understanding of Wyoming's unique grandeur.  I did know that one had best not trust mother nature.  I learned this in the spring of 1977, when the Dry Fork of the Cheyenne River flooded, totally rearranging the backyard of my uncle's ranch; in the winter of 1979, when snow drifts caved in the roof of the teacher's house at our rural school; and in the summer of 1984, when the grasshoppers ate not only all the grass, but also the note my aunt's neighbor left on her front door.

Then there was the winter we watched as the antelope starved to death, and the summer of 1988, when smoke from the Yellowstone fire hung ominously overhead.  That summer my future brother-in-law and two of my brothers barely raced their fire fighting truck out from between a local range fire and the ranger-lit back fire.  They were so close to disaster that they melted the plastic door panel of the truck and had to turn the water hose on themselves.  They still left eyebrow and arm hairs behind.

Wyoming's human history is made up of tides of people rushing in for a boom and flowing out just as quickly with the inevitable bust.  The few who manage to stay behind and establish roots are not only determined but also lucky, and they generally know it.  As a result, Wyoming locals have a unique view of life and the world.  We tend to be tolerant of newcomers, taking a wait-and-see kind of attitude.  The new transplants may survive -- and our time may soon be up.  Our sense of humor not only celebrates our occasional successes, but even more, appreciates the irony of even attempting to make a living in Wyoming.

To those of us who live here year round and hope always to stay, Wyoming's landscapes, while wonderful in themselves, are much more compelling when held in tandem with the stories that make up the human dimension of Wyoming.  The bed & breakfast and ranch recreation establishments featured in Tastes & Tours of Wyoming, are probably the visitor's best chance to understand Wyoming in this personal, intimate way.  We will attempt to show you our world famous attractions from a fresh angle, as well as introduce our favorite not-yet-touristed sights.  Woven throughout will be many of the funny, sad and just plain interesting stories that give our land meaning.  Some of these stories may not be 100% historical fact -- but they are 100% Wyoming, as we Wyomingites experience it.  We hope this taste will be satisfying.

Karla Steinle Pellatz, Author