From Casper to Star Valley, A Long Day, Fraud at the Cokeville Pilot Station

We left Casper early, eight am, and headed for our base camp in Star Valley. Its a very long drive for us, about four hundred miles and along the way we had to cross two mountain passes. Once there we plan on spending most of the summer fly fishing, working rocks, playing pickel ball, and watching Wyoming wildlife.
It's an easy drive to Lander, Wyoming before your start over South Pass. That is a short but steep ascent over the southern Wind River Mountains. I forgot to put tow hall on and so I heated up and we had to pull over to cool down. Renita and I took turns rock hounding but we didn't find any more rocks so we made it over the pass.

Once over we  made the easy descent into the Red Desert. Reaching Farson we decided to take the less traveled route to Kemmerer. We didn't see any wild horses, the BLM conducted a large roundup last year, but there was lots of standing water so the horses could be anywhere.
From Kemmerer we turned north to Cokeville. There we stopped for diesel at the Pilot station. I inserted my debit card and the purchase was declined, so Renita went in to pay. When she came out she said her phone had pinged but neither one of us could get a signal to call the bank.
Driving to Salt Pass we skirted Salt Creek. Its one of our favorite streams to fly fish but it was high and muddy. Stopping at the pass, its only seven thousand feet. we had out kayaks checked by the Wyoming Boat inspector, they stop all boats in an attempt to stop the zebra mussel, before heading to our place at Star Valley Rv Resort.

Upon arrival we got a message from our bank that a five hundred dollar purchase had been declined by our bank. It had happened as fast as I had swiped the card, three minutes before Renita used the same card on the inside to pay for the fuel.
Calling our bank we went through all of our purchases for the past month and luckily the only fraud was the attempted theft in Cokeville. So we are waiting for a new card to be mailed to our mail forwarding service and then mailed to here. As we say in Wyoming, hanging is too good an option for anyone who tries to scam retired people. Right now placing such scum as bear or wolf bait seems more in line.

On second thought they would probably cause the bear or wolves indigestion. It';s good to be home. Clear skies