Medicine Bow, Wyoming

By Joe Berk

We were a swarm of 250cc bees bound for Medicine Bow, Wyoming.   I didn’t know why that excited me and I didn’t know what to expect, but the place sounded romantic.  Not romantic in the sense of female companionship; it was instead the romance of the Old West.  Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and we were headed there on our single-cylinder Zongshen motorcycles.   We had been on the road for a week, showing the American West to our Chinese and Colombian visitors.  It all started on the other side of the world in Chongqing when Zongshen asked if I could take them on a ride though America.

Wow, could I ever.

Medicine Bow.   It had a nice ring to it.  I was thinking maybe they had a McDonald’s and we could have lunch there.   I think the reason Medicine Bow sounded so intriguing is I had heard it maybe dozens of times in western movies and television shows.  Medicine Bow was one of the major destinations for cattle drives in the 1800s, where cows boarded trains for their one-way trip east, where they would stop being cows and become steaks.  An average of 2,000 cows shipped out of Medicine Bow every day back then.   That would keep McDonald’s going for a day or two (except there were no McDonald’s in the 1800s).

I was surprised when we buzzed in.  Medicine Bow is about five buildings, total, none of them was a McDonald’s, but one was the Virginian Hotel.  It’s the hotel you see in the photo at the top of this blog and as you might imagine there’s a story to it.  You see, back in the day, the first western novel ever was written by a dude named Owen Wister, and the title of his book was The Virginian.  It was later made into a movie.  The story is about a young female schoolteacher who settled in Medicine Bow and two cowboys who vied for her attention.  When the historic hotel was later built in Medicine Bow, what other name could be more appropriate than The Virginian?  And about the name of the town, Medicine Bow?  Legend has it that Native Americans found the best mahogany for making bows (as in bows and arrows) in a bend (a bow) along the Medicine River, which runs through the area.    I can’t make up stuff this good.

I was the designated leader of the Zongshen swarm on this ride. My job was easy.  All the mental heavy lifting and deep thinking fell to good buddy and long-time riding compañero Baja John, who planned our entire 5,000-mile journey through the American West.  John did a hell of a job.  The roads he selected were magnificent and the destinations superb.  It’s also when I first met Joe Gresh, who was on assignment from Motorcyclist magazine to cover our story (more on that in a bit).

Back to Medicine Bow, the Virginian Hotel, and a few of the photos I grabbed on that ride.  The place is awesome, and the Virginian is where we had lunch.

After lunch, we wandered around the hotel for a bit. It would be fun to spend the night in Medicine Bow, I thought.  Dinner at the hotel and drinks in the bar (as I type this, I can almost hear someone on the piano belting out Buffalo Gal).    I will return some day to check that box.

The Virginian Hotel bar was indeed inviting and I could have spent more time there, but we were on the bikes and my rule is always no booze on the bikes.  I grabbed a few photos.  We had more miles to make that afternoon and more of Wyoming awaited.

The Virginian Hotel owner (who looked like he could have been someone right out of Central Casting) saw our interest in photography and showed us this photograph.   He told me only six or seven copies of it exist.  Spend a minute reading the writing…it is amazing.

Medicine Bow was a fun visit, it is a place I would like to see again, and it has a palpable feel of the Old West.  It was a place where we could have stayed longer, but after lunch it was time for Happy Trails and we were on the road again.   I felt like a cowboy, I suppose, swinging my leg over my motorcycle.  Instead of “giddy up” it was a twist of the key and a touch on the starter button; the result was the same as we continued our trek west with Frankie Lane’s Rawhide on repeat in my mind:  Keep rollin’, rollin’ rollin’, keep those motos rollin’…

In a few hours, we’d be riding into the sunset.  Lord, this was a fantastic ride.

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Here are a couple of videos you might like.  The first is about Medicine Bow, the second is Joe Gresh’s video covering the ride.  And one more thing…don’t miss Joe Gresh’s magnificent story about our ride in Motorcyclist magazine.

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