One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"This really needs to be an Olympic sport..."}]

One more for 5 14 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Sunday, May 14, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

This really needs to be an Olympic sport...

One More For The Road: Sunday, May 14, 2023

 This really needs to be an Olympic sport...

Welsch mug

Jeff Welsch

Sports

Their Links of Dreams unfolded in every way they imagined: The long drive past cornfields on a lonely dirt road, a massive American flag and windsock fluttering over a clubhouse perched atop a knoll on the endless undulating terrain of northeast Nebraska, and the first religious glimpse of the No. 1 tee, fairways and greens unlike any others.

For Sheridan’s Josh Gardner and Jared Stiver, a moment coveted by golfers worldwide — but rarely experienced — was, at long last, at hand.

To secure a tee time at the Landmand Golf Club outside of Homer, Nebraska, 

Some 11,000 slots are made available each New Year’s Eve for the novel 4-year-old course; they’re gone in less than an hour.

Now here Gardner and Stiver were the first week of August, two regular guys from Wyoming, somehow entered to play Landmand in the inaugural The Heartbeat tournament, a Golf Channel creation, after Gardner took a Plan B New Year's Eve stab on the course's website. 

Soon they would be pitted against pairs from all 50 states over four days, a fortuitous practice round and three days of competition.

“Everything about it was cool,” Stiver told Cowboy State Daily less than a week after their return home. “You’re on top of a hill from start to finish, and you see forever and it’s all golf around you, and it’s all awesome.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the golf happens."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Course Unlike Any Other"}]

Gardner and Stiver have played courses of all shapes and sizes, in all types of environments, foreign and domestic.

[{"type":"text","text":"Nothing could prepare them for Landmand."}]

“We got there and I was just excited to be there,” Gardner recalled with a chuckle. “It didn’t really matter what was in front of us. Like, this is awesome. But by the time we got to the fourth or fifth green, I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this four days in a row.’

“I wasn’t prepared for how massive it all was. The scale is hard to describe.”

Landmand was carved out of the treeless Loess Hills, and at nearly 600 acres is roughly four times the size of typical 18-hole courses. Fairways are the width of football fields. Gaping bunkers swallow golfers whole.

[{"type":"text","text":"Only the tee boxes offer any semblance of flatness."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And then ... those greens."}]

On average, they sprawl to more than double the size of typical American greens. Some are four to six times larger. At three-quarters of an acre, the 17th green ranks as one of the world’s largest, in the same league as the revered Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gradients rose to 25%."}]

“You could put seven Powder Horn greens in one there,” Stiver said of their home course in Sheridan. “Monster greens.”

Echoed Gardner: “Greens the size of Walmart. If that golf course was here (Sheridan) I’d take my kids sledding on it and they’d need a helmet. They’d be like the blue runs on a ski hill. In some spots where they placed the flag you couldn’t even see it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Howling Wyoming-esque Winds"}]

The greens sport windsocks instead of flags, a nod to visibility and a notorious local climate. 

Winds can be so ferocious and unpredictable the course has two handicaps dedicated to them on the scorecard, one for gales howling from the southwest and the other for the nor’easters.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner and Stiver got a gritty taste of both."}]

“You’d think Wyoming boys would be good in a wind, but us Sheridan boys … not so good,” Gardner mused.

Agreed Stiver: “Guys from Evanston and Rock Springs, and the Casper Country Club boys, would be a better fit.”

It’s this enormity of challenge, the scale of the course, and its vistas — not to mention the modest $175 greens fees — that has golfers nationwide poised like expectant parents with their fingers hovering over their keyboards every New Year’s Eve.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then reality bites for those lucky enough to score a round."}]

But, unlike all other golfers except the locals who have the luxury of pouncing last-minute on a rare cancellation, Gardner and Stiver had four full days in the belly of this manicured beast.

Entering the final round, they were in 32nd place out of 52 teams. Five birdies and 18 holes later, they walked off their final monster green in 19th.

“The final round, I did feel better about it,” Stiver said. “I kind of knew how I could go and knock it out. By then I still didn’t know exactly where to go on the greens, but it definitely helped.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Being in the top 20 was respectable for sure,\" added Gardner."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Giving A Wyoming-Style Gift"}]

The golf was the centerpiece of the adventure, but the experience didn’t end there.

Owner Will Andersen, Golf Channel host Gary Williams and the course’s architects were on hand to explain the Landmand concept and history. Their passion and detail gave Gardner and Stiver an entirely different perspective as they plied the course on days three and four.

Stiver also was struck by Andersen’s graciousness, and that he’d remember his name each time they’d bump into each other amid the throngs of golfers, staffers, media and spectators.

Small wonder: The duo made an impression when they presented Andersen with a spur with hearts cut into it made by renowned Sheridan craftsman Tom Balding. They also gave Andersen a copper shot glass from their hometown Mint Bar.

“Fifty thousand people have played golf here and nobody’s brought me anything,” Stiver recalls a touched Andersen telling them.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We just wanted to take a piece of Wyoming,” Gardner explained."}]

When it was over and they’d walked off the Walmart parking lot that was their 18th green for the final time, filmed by The Golf Channel shaking hands with their partners for the round, Gardner and Stiver said they both felt a palpable sense of relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"Their immediate reaction: Never again."}]

A week later, they are still nursing the bruises to their golf egos from what Gardner says is the toughest course he’s ever played. But they’re also certain their links version of PTSD will subside.

“There will be a day,” Stiver said with a chuckle, “when we’re ready to get hurt again.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner agreed."}]

“The event itself was exceptional,” he said of a tournament where their $7,000 team entry fee covered everything from meals and drinks to their 10 daily range balls. “It was better than what I expected. Then to spend 10 hours each way with a buddy and a truck and no distractions and just hang out — it was just a great week.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Golf Envy Back Home"}]

They’re enjoying their few minutes of golf-envy fame back home, too, though a torn rotator cuff suffered at the Powder Horn member-guest event has sidelined Gardner from the duo’s mission of playing every Wyoming course over the next few summers.

[{"type":"text","text":"Landmand Is all anybody in their Sheridan circles wants to talk about."}]

Do they have advice should any of their golfing buddies somehow win the lottery on New Year’s Eve and land a tee time on this Links of Dreams in the Loess Hills?

“Just experience it,” Gardner said with a laugh, “because you’re not going to walk away going ‘I’m a really good golfer.’”

Contact Jeff Welsch at jeff@cowboystatedaily.com

Landmand Landman landscape inset 8 15 26

<title>Sheridan Golfers Finally Get To Play Toughest Place To Book A Tee Time In The U.S. | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two golfers from Sheridan won the lottery on New Year's Eve when they were selected to play at the toughest place to book a tee time in the U.S. All 11,000 tee times were booked in one hour and they played last week. "It's all awesome," Jared Stiver said.

Sheridan Golfers Finally Get To Play Toughest Place To Book A Tee Time In The U.S.

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Business & Tourism

When Brian Downing opened his eyes somewhere in Wyoming in the summer of 1975, he saw a giant pink elephant dancing above him.

[{"type":"text","text":"For a moment, he wasn't entirely convinced it was real."}]

Downing had gotten out of the Army a few months earlier and was hitchhiking from Washington, D.C., to Bellingham, Washington, before starting college at Georgetown University that fall.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It was a respectable means of transportation then,\" he recalled."}]

Somewhere in eastern Wyoming, two Native American men picked him up and offered him a Coors. 

That alone was something of a novelty. At the time, the cold Colorado beer was hard to get east of the Mississippi River, and Downing remembers it as a welcome break from the summer heat.

"My hosts were at least somewhat inebriated and had a dismembered doll on the dashboard," Downing said.

[{"type":"text","text":"That was disconcerting, but off they went."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, Downing fell asleep."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"He woke when he sensed the car had stopped. Still groggy, he looked up."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A dancing pink elephant and a sign for DT's Liquors."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It took a moment to shake off the idea I was dreaming,\" he said."}]

The men dropped him off near Rawlins about two hours later. Downing continued west and made it all the way to Washington.

He doesn't remember much more about that peculiar ride, but more than 50 years later, he vividly remembers the elephant.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Seeing Pink Elephants"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"There is something almost too perfect about Downing's story."}]

Americans, after all, had been "seeing pink elephants" long before Downing saw his in Wyoming.

The expression became shorthand in the early 20th century for the bizarre hallucinations associated with heavy drinking and alcohol withdrawal.

Jack London famously invoked the imagery in his 1913 autobiographical novel 

, writing of a man who sees "blue mice and pink elephants" in his delirium.

In Walt Disney's 1941 animated classic, Dumbo and Timothy Mouse accidentally drink water spiked with champagne. What follows is one of the strangest sequences Disney ever put on film.

Elephants multiply, dance, march and morph into bizarre shapes in a surreal, ethanol-soaked dream.

"Pink Elephants on Parade" didn't invent the association between pink elephants and booze, but it helped plant the image firmly in American popular culture.

[{"type":"text","text":"And in Cheyenne, the joke became even better."}]

Because DT's wasn't named for delirium tremens, although it would make sense. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"D.T. Was A Guy"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Mike Moser has heard the assumption plenty of times."}]

Moser, executive director of the Wyoming State Liquor Association and a former Cheyenne bar owner, first moved to the city in 1980 and has spent decades in Wyoming's liquor industry.

"The vast majority of people don't realize the dude's name was D.T. Johnson," Moser said. "It wasn't the DTs that you get from alcohol. It was just his initials."

Johnson was also an important figure in Wyoming's early liquor industry. Moser said he became the first president of the Wyoming State Liquor Association in 1945.

It wasn't until the early 2000s that DT's expanded, Moser said. The owner bought A&A Discount Liquor and converted it into a second DT's.

That larger operation became DT's Liquor Mart and Tusker Bar. It eventually closed in late 2024.

[{"type":"text","text":"The old Lincolnway DT's kept going."}]

Moser said the Sullivan family owned the store for years before Kevin Georges bought it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Kid Who Bought The Place"}]

Georges was born and raised in Cheyenne, and he remembers a handful of markers around town that stuck in his mind as a little boy.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We always would drive by the pink elephant,\" Georges said."}]

Sometimes on Sundays, his parents would take the kids to get doughnuts and swing past DT's so they could see the elephant moving above the building.

"That was a marker for us," Georges said. "I was familiar with the pink elephant way back when, having no idea even what the building and the establishment was." 

Georges came from another old Cheyenne retail family. His family had operated a furniture business for generations.

Eventually, the furniture industry began changing, and the family faced a decision about whether to remain in the business or try something different.

[{"type":"text","text":"Mike Sullivan, then the owner of DT's, was a close friend of Georges."}]

A conversation between the two turned into an idea, which turned into negotiations.

[{"type":"text","text":"In 2008, he officially bought the place."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Neighborhood Bar "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"For Moser, the staying power of DT's isn't simply about a funny sign."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's unique,\" he said of the elephant."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And its location helps."}]

"Lots of people drive on Lincolnway, so everybody knows where it is," he said.

Moser sees DT's as part of something that's becoming increasingly uncommon: the locally owned neighborhood bar and liquor store that survives long enough to become part of a community's identity.

Retail has changed dramatically during his lifetime. Grocery stores and other businesses that were once locally owned have given way to large corporate chains.

[{"type":"text","text":"Local watering holes have proved more stubborn."}]

"I think there will always be a place for the neighborhood bar because that's where we meet our friends," Moser said.

"There's not too many businesses where you can still walk in and shake the hand and have a beer with the owner."

Bars and package liquor stores, he said, remain among the "stalwarts of small business."

"I think that's part of the nostalgia that the liquor industry has that most industries, sadly, have lost," he said. "We're still hometown businesses."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Still Nodding"}]

Roadside America was once filled with strange things built to make travelers look twice.

Giant cowboys, dinosaurs, doughnuts and fiberglass animals loomed over highways, each competing for the attention of motorists speeding past.

Many disappeared along with the businesses they advertised, but the pachyderm keeps keeping on.

The rooftop animatronic is old — exactly how old, Georges doesn't know — but much of its original mechanical construction has survived.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Back in the day they built things to last,\" he said."}]

The old parts can still be serviced, Georges said, and DT's makes a point of maintaining them. About two years ago, the elephant got another fresh coat of paint.

"We hope that it never goes down," Georges said. "We make sure that we keep that icon moving."

D Ts pink elephant 8 15 26

<title>Drinking Wyoming: No, You’re Not Drunk — That’s Just DT's Dancing Pink Elephant | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Back in 1975, a hitchhiker woke up beneath Cheyenne’s giant pink elephant and wondered if he was hallucinating. He wasn’t. The booze-loving pachyderm has been bobbing over DT’s for decades. "We make sure that we keep that icon moving," says DT's owner.

Drinking Wyoming: No, You’re Not Drunk — That’s Just DT's Dancing Pink Elephant

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Around Wyoming

For the Haux sisters, the enduring mystery of their father’s fate still crystallizes around one stark image: His truck, abandoned in the Red Desert, an image taken from a newspaper article.

Clifford “Russ” Haux of Mills vanished on Nov. 26, 2003, near Wamsutter in south-central Wyoming where he worked as an oil-rig driller. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

The last image of him is his fading headlights as he drove off into a winter night trying to find a place to cross a ditch.

One minute he was there, the next, he was gone — last seen driving his pickup into a ditch, looking for a place to cross.

For two years, extensive searches turned up nothing. Then a hunter found his purple Ford Ranger less than six miles from where he was last seen. Its front tires were stuck in a washed-out riverbed, with evidence suggesting he’d tried to free them.

His children – Lois, Justy and Chancy – grew up on memories and secondhand stories, left to wonder what had happened to their father.

The story doesn’t add up based on their recollections of their dad: A guy they describe as a “driller through and through” and seasoned “mountain man” who was also a skilled outdoorsman.

“I don’t know what happened out there or the trauma he had to go through,” Justy told Cowboy State Daily. “Anything could have happened.”

The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office likewise can’t speculate about what might have happened to Haux after he left the vehicle. But there’s no evidence to date to suggest Haux was a victim, said Jason Mower, public information officer with the department.

“Based on the evidence available, including what was found when Haux’s vehicle was later located, the disappearance has been considered accidental rather than the result of foul play,” Mower wrote in an email to Cowboy State Daily.

More than two decades later, Mower said the case remains active and unresolved with no new leads they can publicly release at this time.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disappearing Headlights"}]

His daughters have many questions about what transpired the night their father disappeared and how his vehicle went overlooked for two years, given the extensive search efforts described in the documentation shared by the sheriff’s office.

All they know is that Haux and his friend and co-worker left the oil rig the night of Nov. 26 to retrieve his Suburban that they’d gotten stuck in a mud bog on Nov. 18.

In the early morning hours of Nov. 19, Haux’s rig mates returned to camp, Mower said. Haux apparently stayed with the vehicle and was rescued on Nov. 20. The sheriff’s office did not specify how Haux was recovered, though his daughters were told it was by a search plane.

It was this vehicle that Haux and his rig mate were going to retrieve the night he disappeared.

The man named in the report was driving the forklift they’d borrowed from the rig to dig out the vehicle. Cowboy State Daily is not identifying him, as law enforcement has not labeled him a person of interest in Haux’s disappearance.

It’s not clear if they were successfully able to free the vehicle, but when Haux tried to cross a ditch in his pickup, he was unable to do so. The co-worker tried “to knock down the bank of the ditch” that was blocking Haux from crossing but couldn’t, according to the sheriff’s report.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, Haux headed south along the ditch, looking for a passable route."}]

The co-worker watched Haux’s headlights fade into the night. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.

When nobody could locate him, Haux was officially reported missing two days later to the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office, which launched a 10-day search effort complete with four-wheelers and vehicles, said the report.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Frantic Search"}]

Lois, then 5 and the daughter of Haux’s second wife, Laquana, remembers how frantic her mother was when they got the call that Haux was missing.

Justy, who was 15, learned about it when she tried to call her father to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. She and her brother, Chancy, then 18, lived with their mother in Worland.

The sisters recall the family wanted to help look for him but were told by rescuers to stay put for their safety, given the dangerous terrain.

Meanwhile, the sisters said, Haux’s brother hired a pilot and attempted to search by airplane.  

The temperature the night Haux disappeared plunged from a high of 27 down to 10 degrees with no precipitation, according to historical weather data for Rock Springs from the National Weather Service.

Their dad was a tough man, Lois said, and an avid outdoorsman who they believe would have known how to handle himself safely in the elements. He was also a big guy at over 6 feet tall and just under 200 pounds.

“Our dad was outdoor smart,” she said. “He knew how to start a fire to keep warm and knew not to leave your shelter in a snowstorm or 20-degree weather or colder.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Remaining Questions"}]

This is just one of the details that doesn’t make sense to the sisters as they continue questioning the narrative, including whether the co-worker was thoroughly questioned after Haux’s disappearance.

Lois said her mother was told the co-worker had been acting like a “chicken with its head cut off” and was acting strangely when questioned.

They have never met the man nor had the chance to ask what he remembered, Justy clarified, nor are they blaming him. But they do wonder if he provided a full accounting of the night in question.

Mower said that the record indicates any interview with him “was fairly cursory.”

“I do not see documentation indicating that he was considered a person of interest in Haux’s disappearance,” he stated in an email.

The siblings also questioned the thoroughness of the search, especially since their father’s truck was found 6 miles from his last known location—  two years after he vanished.

Mower affirmed that extensive ground and air searches were conducted across more than 1,000 miles of remote and isolated terrain, efforts formally suspended on December 7, 2003.

When Haux’s pickup was discovered with its front wheels mired in a collapsed riverbank 

, they found a broken shovel and pieces of wood jammed beneath the tires — signs he had attempted to free the vehicle.

A red suitcase with Haux’s clothes was also found inside the unlocked cab.

Though additional searches took place after the truck was located in 2005, Mower stated there have been no further operations in the 20 years since.

He added that nothing at the scene indicated violence or criminal encounter. Nor was there evidence of meth labs or other hazards Haux might have stumbled into while seeking help.

“Given the remoteness and terrain, that scenario does not appear probable based on what we know,” Mower said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Looked Everyday"}]

Ryan Hasbrouck’s sympathy for the Haux children runs deep. His father, Kenneth, was the tool pusher on the rig where Haux went missing, and he took the disappearance to heart.

Hasbrouck says he felt it, too — he’d known Haux, worked for and alongside him over the years. He described him as a great worker and a smart guy who was incredibly well-liked. 

He wasn’t on the crew when Haux disappeared though; he’d left a couple months earlier to train as a directional driller.

Still, he remembers clearly how it weighed on his dad, who felt responsible. Hasbrouck recalls daily phone calls in which his father listed all the places he was still searching, weeks and months after Haux vanished.

“He looked every day, every night, even on his days off,” Hasbrouck said. “It ate at him.”

Hasbrouck was so worried about his own father going missing that he asked him to check in every day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Roughneck mentality’"}]

Hasbrouck also said it was common for oil-rig workers to cut across the desert — off the oilfield roads, across open country, no matter the risk.

The official roads built for semi-trucks hauling oil and water were passable — mostly unpaved or gravel two tracks. But they were long. Ninety minutes from town to a rig was not unusual, he said. This, coupled with 12-hour-plus workdays, had a way of making the open desert look like an option.

“It’s the roughneck mentality,” he said. “If they think they can save 30 or 40 minutes and they get to go home, they’re gonna do stupid shit.”

It’s easy to get lost and turned around out in the desert, especially at night, he added.

This was back before smartphones. Just flip phones with patchy service, no maps, no extras — nothing to help if you got turned around out there.

The country doesn’t forgive that kind of thinking, though. Hasbrouck put his own odds at about 50/50

“I’ve ended up stuck a few times, thinking, ‘Oh, I can go this way. It’ll save me 20 minutes,’” he said. 

Nearly 23 years after Clifford “Russ” Haux vanished in the Red Desert near Wamsutter, his daughters are still haunted. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

One More For The Road: Sunday, May 14, 2023

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