Wyoming & Italy

I flew from New York to Laramie for a friend’s birthday celebration. We drive up into the mountains and spent the weekend at a weird little climber campground, Ten Sleep Rock Ranch. (Look up “Gluey Louie” for a fun bit of background.) Some influencer types were hosting a rave in their Black Diamond-branded van. Not really my normal style of camping, but it was surreal and funny.

Being packed like sardines among the influencers is the price you pay for the Ranch’s incredible location: near great climbing, but also right outside town, meaning easy access to the brewery (where they also happened to be hosting the state singer-songwriter competition that weekend).

The Bighorns were really quite gorgeous. Met awesome people and got one very good hike in.

…And then I borrowed my friend’s car, drove it down to Casper, dropped it off in the airport lot, caught a comically short flight to Denver, showered in the Capital One lounge (this was essential), and took one final flight all the way to Rome, where a train and a bus finally got me to our little apartment in Monteverde. I unpacked the weird mishmash of Wyoming camping gear and Italian summer vacation-wear that filled my carry-on and finally got some sleep.

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I hadn’t been to Rome since I was way too young to remember it. It was beautiful, and although it was certainly expensive and crowded (and inhospitable to people who forget to book things in advance), on balance, the excellent public transit made it somewhat less stressful than what would come next.

From Rome, a train took us all the way down to Bari, where we rented a car (a BYD crossover; typically annoying late-model EU nag) and proceeded by road across Puglia.

I did not particularly enjoy driving a biggish car on Italian roads. I’m beginning to accept that driving-heavy vacations, especially outside the US, just might not be for me.

After spending one night in Gargano, we left the coast and explored a bunch of small towns with enviable culture, history, and architectural beauty: Matera, Altamura (quick stop for the local bread), Alberobello, Locorotondo, Castro, and of course Lecce.

I think Puglia and environs are really underappreciated by Americans. Each town is beautiful and unique, the beaches are unreal, and there’s a general feeling of calm that I really enjoyed. The food is simple, tasty, and very local. There’s a specialty to try in every area. (For my fellow sufferers, most of those specialties are available gluten-free — Italy is good to us.)

Southern Italy is poorer and less developed than the north, even today, but nowhere in Puglia felt neglected, like you might expect it to if all your preconceptions of the area come from Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (as mine certainly did). Every town, down to the very smallest, is such a proud little place with its own experience of history told through architecture and art. It’s hard to imagine any of it in the state Levi experienced in the 1930s.

At the end of our trip, we spent a night in Venice (with packed half days of sightseeing before and after). I think about a day is the right amount of time for Venice. It was a pretty extraordinary place to see, totally unlike anywhere else in the world. But it’s not a place I would choose to spend a month, like I might in Rome or Puglia.

With that, back to New York.