Sitting Outside the Smith Sherlock Company Store and Watching the Loniest Man in South Pass City

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Gator sitting outside the Miner's Exchange Saloon, South Pass City State Historic Site, Wyoming 
 
Gator sitting in the shade outside the Miner's Exchange Saloon.

As usual, Gator and I met up at 8:00 and took sarsaparilla over to the Miner's Exchange Saloon. I then went into the archives and inventoried files and Gator went off to do his various odd jobs. The file I was working on today was a slog. It has a lot of old time mining deeds, which are always hard to read. Progress was slow. 

Luckily, noon came and I was off to the Smith Sherlock Company Store! Today was unexpectedly slow. I had only nine visitors and one dog until 3:30. Then about eight people, in three groups, and one dog came at around 3:20. They all came in at about the same time and left a few minutes apart, so the last half hour was quiet. 17 visitors and two dogs is a low count for the store. I did have the chance to work some on my Lovejoy project and I explored a couple of research topics I have been considering.

I took a photo of Gator sitting beside the Miner's Exchange Saloon. For some reason, a large number of visitors to the site do not walk across the bridge. The come down the main street and almost all will stop in at the store when they see the door is open (FOMO, I guess). I suspect some of them are just played out by the time they get back up this way. I often will point Gator out to visitors and ask if they remember the old Maytag washers commercial, which stated the Maytag Repairman was the loneliest man in town. Gator is giving him some competition.

I closed the store at 4:00 and headed home. We had leftovers for dinner and the evening was relaxing- reading and some writing. 

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