Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all watch a Macaw go for a ride..."}]

Smile 12 31 23

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

<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, December 31, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Now let's all watch a Macaw go for a ride...

Daily Smile: Sunday, December 31, 2023

 Now let's all watch a Macaw go for a ride...

Zakary Sonntag

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

When Iranian forces brought down a U.S. Army helicopter Monday off the coast of Oman, Dillon Jackson’s reaction wasn't shock so much as recognition.

“The first thing I wondered is what happened, what were they doing?” he said. “What did they see, or not see?”

It’s the reflex of someone who has spent years training for moments just like that.

Jackson, a Wyoming native, spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy flying helicopters over some of the world’s most volatile waterways, including the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

He retired just one week before the incident off Oman, but incidents like this still pull him back into the same calculus of how things unfold and how quickly they can go wrong.

“There’s a lot of ways that could have gone differently,” he said. “A lot of Navy helicopters go into the water, and one or more of the crew members don’t make it out.”

What People Don’t Understand About Hormuz

For many Americans, a phrase like “naval presence” or “blockade” conjures a simple image of ships lined up on the water like net buoys of a fishing boat. 

Jackson said the reality is much more complicated. 

Across the Persian Gulf, and even through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, there are thousands of miles of water and hundreds of vessels to account for at any given time. Tracking them requires constant surveillance, meticulous coordination, and patience.

“One of our missions in the helicopter community was to fly up and run radar in order to track all the ships out there,” he said, explaining that it gets tough when vessels use radar-avoidance tactics.

“It’s a lot harder when they start turning broadcasting systems off,” he said. “Now you’re trying to find people who don’t want to be found.”

Even an area as confined as the Strait of Hormuz is difficult to manage amid shifting national interests.

“The thing most people don’t understand is just how narrow it is. You can see land on the right side of the ship and land on the left at the same time. These aren’t wide-open places,” he said, adding how in that environment, the margin for error narrows too.

“In some ways, it’s like if Wyoming went to war with Idaho. The countries (in the Persian Gulf) are about that size and the distances aren’t that great,” he said.

Though he deployed in conflict zones around the world, the strain Jackson felt most wasn’t physical. 

The lessons that stand out most from those years aren’t about tactics or preparedness, but about the way life in the Navy can reshape relationships with the people waiting at home.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Cost That Doesn’t Show Up on a Map"}]

As his deployments accumulated in places as far flung as North Korea and the Middle East, physical separation resulted in emotional distance too.

He met his wife while stationed in Pensacola, Florida, where they bonded over a shared love of horses and imagined eventually settling into a quieter life with a few horses of their own. 

Neither anticipated how difficult it would be to build that life around constant movement between different duty stations and long deployments.

It was an emotional balancing act, said Jackson. At points, something as simple as a call home could feel like a tripwire. 

“I might try to make light of things  —tell her I saw whales or a rainbow — and it might be the only good thing that’s happened all month,” he said. “Back home, she’s had a hard day, and it can sound like I’m just out there having fun on some cruise.”

The situation required compartmentalizing, but Jackson needed to be careful not to separate himself too much.

Life “underway” could swing from long stretches of routine to moments of sudden intensity, and the same mental compartmentalization that helped him manage on duty carried over into life at home.

“That compartmentalization helps you function in stressful situations, but if you’re not careful, it can also become a way of keeping parts of yourself walled off, and that’ll show up when you come home,” he said.

The balancing act became additionally hard with the arrival of their two children. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Miles Between Family"}]

That tension came into sharp focus during a nearly 11‑month deployment in 2020. 

He was stationed in the Persian Gulf on the USS Reagan, meanwhile his wife was back in Washington state, parenting their two young children by herself and juggling the pandemic stresses of school disruption and social isolation.

When he called home, his kids didn’t always want to talk to him. When they did, every mile between them was felt.

“The longer that tour goes on, the harder and harder and harder it becomes, because how do you talk to a 5-year-old kid once every few weeks for five minutes on the phone and stay engaged when you've been gone for months,” he said. 

“Sometimes after the call, everybody’s just sadder. My last six years in the Navy, it feels like I really haven't been around (my family) much at all,” he said. “There’s a reason divorce rates are so high in the military.”

That strain is common among service members.

The crew of the USS Gerald R. Ford was in the news this year after their deployment stretched to a record 326 days for an aircraft carrier. It struck a familiar chord with Jackson.

“There’s a part of you that has to ask: What is happening in the world that justifies keeping the 5,000 sailors on board that ship out there that long, and who’s making that decision, because that is a huge cost to all of those families,” Jackson said.

These experiences have reframed how Jackson understands his own story, particularly where it began. Now, stepping away from the Navy, he’s looking back at that beginning with a different perspective.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Escape Velocity"}]

Growing up in Kemmerer, most people Jackson knew either worked in an open‑pit coal mine, a nearby power plant, or on the surrounding ranches. 

His dad was a miner and cowboy; his mom worked at the local school. 

Like a lot of kids in small towns, Jackson said  he craved to see the world beyond it.

“I used to tell people small towns have their own gravity,” he said. “I called it escape velocity — I spent 18 years trying to build up enough speed so that when I left for college, I wouldn’t get pulled back.”

He made his first break by heading to the University of Wyoming, and after college he took a job as a residence director at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. 

He’d always wanted to be a pilot, figuring it the easiest way to see the world.

To the friends he grew up with, and who knew him as a long‑haired guitar player, Jackson would have been more likely to join the Peace Corp than the military. 

That changed in September 2001, when he woke one morning to his clock radio and heard news of planes flying into buildings. 

The next week, he walked into a recruiting office, setting him on a path that would take him into the Navy and, eventually, around the world.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Shark Week"}]

In Japan, he befriended the owners of a small counter bar near his apartment. In Thailand, he once ordered a simple “chicken and rice” dish and got a curry so strong the memory of it still makes him sweat. 

From Singapore to the Persian Gulf, one of his favorite parts of the job was simply interacting with people different from him.

He also came to see the Navy itself as a kind of compressed version of the country.

In a destroyer’s ward room or a carrier’s flight deck, Jackson worked with Americans from all 50 states. 

To him, it was the closest thing to a working model of the country: a handful of people from everywhere learning each other’s quirks, arguing, ribbing — and watching Shark Week.

“The captain of the ship would come into the ward room to get coffee, and finally one time he says, ‘'Man, what is it with you pilots and watching Shark Week?’” said Jackson. “Without skipping a beat, I turned to him and said, 'That's our motivation to stay airborne.'”

As he steps away from a 20-year career, Jackson is thinking deeper now about the institution of the military as a whole. 

During that time, he’s said he’s seen a cultural shift that’s made it harder to separate the institution from the political conversations surrounding it.

“We get to look at history with a clear lens. You don’t get that with the present,” he said. "I’ve got a lot of confidence in leadership to figure out what the Navy needs to look like for the next 20 or 50 years.

“What I wonder about more is whether the United States knows what it wants its role in the world to be.”

Jackson is asking a smaller version of that question of himself. 

He knows he wants a civilian job that lends itself to a stable family life, but he’s already running into something he hasn’t faced in a quarter‑century in uniform: job rejection.

While he figures out what comes next, he’s throwing himself into the mission he no longer wants to leave.

In the mornings, he’s in the kitchen making breakfast. He walks his daughter to the bus stop, then meets his son in the yard to throw a baseball. In the evenings, he’s at his daughter's volleyball games or reading to his son aloud from "Encyclopedia Brown" paperbacks. 

Some changes will take time. His wife has to remind him not to “XO” every household problem, shorthand for his Executive Officer rank. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Other adjustments are coming easily."}]

“My daughter is 12, and she is at the stage where I’m getting a lot more eye rolls,” he said, laughing. “I’m doing my best to be an embarrassing father. It’s a role I’m trying to lean into.”

Strait of Hormuz Inset July 18 2019 ZUMA Press via Alamy 6 13 26

<title>Wyoming Navy Pilot Flew Missions Over Strait Of Hormuz, Now Watches War From Home | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dillon Jackson, a Kemmerer native, spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy flying helicopters over some of the world’s most volatile waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz. “The thing most people don’t understand is just how narrow it is," Jackson said.

Wyoming Navy Pilot Flew Missions Over Strait Of Hormuz, Now Watches War From Home

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Entertainment

A casual favor turned into a lifelong fascination for Glenrock’s Mike Cushman, owner of the much-in-demand Powder River Percherons, who have become a regular sight at many of the state’s largest and most popular parades.

“I used to lease a ranch back in the late '80s, and the guy who owned had a hitch of Belgians,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And one day he just asked me if, in my free time, I could help him with that.”

Once he’d learned how to handle Belgians, he started his own team, but the popularity of the large draft horse was driving up prices. That led him to give two dapple-gray Percherons a try. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It was like love at first sight. "}]

“We were trying to create something that had a little flair,” he said. “So those two just escalated from a team of four to six, and before we knew it we had 11 or 12 dapple-gray horses, and we were doing work all over Wyoming, anywhere from Jackson to Cody to Sheridan and Cheyenne and most all the towns in between.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The War Horse Of France"}]

Percherons are conversation starters everywhere they go.

The war horse of France, these animals are massive and athletic, while also being uncommonly beautiful and stylish.

They are actually bigger than the more well-known Clydesdales, standing at 6 feet from the withers and weighing up to 2,600 pounds. Their hooves are the size of dinner plates, which help support all that weight. 

Their actual origins have been lost to time, but the oldest known record goes back before the Crusades, when mares of the Le Perche region of France were mated with Arabian stallions. 

The result was a breed more athletic than most horses. In Cushman’s opinion, they’re among the most fearless breeds of horse anywhere.

“I suppose if I needed to, I could probably drive them through a fire,” he said. “They would trust and believe in me.”

To be clear, Cushman has never tried to drive any of his Percheron teams through a fire. 

He has, on occasion, put them through a bit of a commotion while testing them for parade readiness.

“I know if there was a protest line with a bunch of PETA people standing there waving flags and everything, I could put these horses right over the top of them,” Cushman said. “They would do that for me.”

Percherons are also super intelligent creatures, and full of personality. That’s led to some funny escapades over the last 24 years. 

Like the horse that managed to get itself captured in a bog. 

The poor fella had to wait until morning for rescue, but all was well in the end. 

One year at Don King Days in Sheridan, after the team finished its exhibition round on the polo field, Cushman remembers tying the team to the trailer while he and the crew went to lunch.

When they returned, a big gray gelding named Sarge was somehow standing out in the middle of the vast green field, enjoying a tasty snack of fresh polo field grass.

“I hollered at him and he jerked his head up and ran back to the trailer and put himself right back into the slot where he came from,” Cushman recalled, laughing. “Like a milk cow going into a stanchion.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"What had happened was a loose buckle. "}]

“The neighbor horse and Sarge would fiddle around with each other all the time,” Cushman said. “So the neighbor horse had grabbed the tongue of Sarge’s halter and pulled on it. He pulled that strap through and unbuckled it.”

Sarge knew just what to do then. With no humans around, it was time for play.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Turning Up The Volume"}]

Budweiser is famous for its advertisements featuring long, shimmering lines of large draft horses in their glittering harnesses, clopping down the street. 

It’s a classic six-up hitch — three teams of two, one pair in front of the next.

Percherons can do the same thing, but Cushman has his own idea of how to turn the volume up for parades.

Instead of the six-up, what he likes to do for a “wow” factor is a four abreast setup. 

Picture four massive Percherons side by side across the front of the wagon, rolling shoulder to shoulder down a parade route. It’s a wall of horse flesh coming at you, with a team that stretches nearly 14 feet wide.

“We get a lot of compliments on it,” Cushman said. “There’s a ‘wow’ factor in it.”

Cushman did that last Saturday in Thermopolis  because it fit the theme of the event. For the Fourth of July in Cheyenne, meanwhile, he plans to go with the classic six-up.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Small Town To Big Time"}]

Cushman’s Powder River Percherons have performed for small Wyoming towns like Kaycee and Thermopolis to much larger venues like the Denver National Western Stock Show Parade, where the crowds range up to 100,000 people. 

They’ve been as far away as Tucson, Arizona, on up into Montana, and over to Deadwood, South Dakota. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Most of the venues, though, are Wyoming."}]

“Wyoming is home,” Cushman said. “We just try to take care of our own.”

The horses have carried three Wyoming governors, including Gov. Mark Gordon, as well as former U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi. 

They’ve also carried several celebrities, like actor Cole Hauser, known to millions as Rip from the popular television series “Yellowstone;” and Robert Taylor, who played Sheriff Walt Longmire, the hero of Craig Johnson’s Longmire universe, in the television hit series of the same name.

The Percherons have also carried a number of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champions, including legends like Donnie Gay and Larry Mahan. 

They’re popular in parades and weddings, but have also been tapped for funerals to carry someone’s loved one to a final resting place.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Training Each Other"}]

The horses might seem to naturally take everything in stride from parade to funeral, but there’s quite a bit of training that goes into that even temperament.

That training effectively starts before Cushman ever buys a horse with the Amish families who raise them. 

“We buy them usually when they’re 3 years old,” he said. “And we prefer the Amish horses, because they have good manners and they just haven’t seen the big city life or anything.”

Amish horses also seem to work harder, Cushman said, making them a better value than other options. 

“I mean, the Amish make their living with horses,” Cushman said. “Even the carpenters and the craftsmen will have a saddlebred horse, or will be riding a horse around back and forth to work or to the store or whatever.”

Cushman puts his new horses in a pasture near the interstate, which he believes helps desensitize them to big vehicles and unexpected noises — things that are common in parades.

He will also blend his new horses in with older, more experienced animals as he’s training them for parades.

“They learn from each other,” he said. “They go, ‘Oh well, this is not bothering these guys, why would it bother me?’”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not A Good Wall Street Bet"}]

For all their popularity, celebrity passengers and big-stage appearances, the Powder River Percherons would not be a good Wall Street bet. 

By the time Cushman figures in hay, feed, farrier work, veterinary care, equipment, fuel, hotels, and wages for a crew of five to six people, the retired rancher knows he’s not necessarily breaking even with these horses.

“We aim to at least cover expenses for our travel and whatnot,” he said. “If we took in all the feed and care and the shoeing for these horses and charged that back to the customer, we’d be out of business pretty quickly.”

He likes to think of his horses as a kind of rolling ambassador for the draft horse tradition. The team is a labor of love, everywhere he goes, one where the real payoff is the gee-whiz-cool expressions he sees on the faces of young and old alike. 

His Percherons have rolled under flags and fireworks, past squealing children with grocery bags full of candy. 

When the show is over, they go home and wait for the next call, ever-ready to channel that eternal sense of Americana that every parade needs.

Percherons 1 6 13 26

<title>Up To 2,600 Pounds Each, Powder River Percherons Are Huge At Wyoming Parades | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Anyone who’s been to a parade in Wyoming in the past 25 years knows the Powder River Percherons, teams of dapple-gray draft horses that tower over crowds. Also called the "war horse of France," they're 2,600 pounds each and 6 feet tall at the withers.

Up To 2,600 Pounds Each, Powder River Percherons Are Huge At Wyoming Parades

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

David and Jennifer Sinclair have been driving across North America for years, 

 along the way on their Sinclair Trail blog. Their latest adventure in Canada went viral for a different reason.

The Sinclairs were on their way to Alaska in their RV when they made a fuel stop in Fort St. John, British Columbia. He was towing his Chevy Colorado pickup truck via a tow base plate attached to the back of the RV.

“As we were leaving, the front frame of our truck failed,” Sinclair told Cowboy State Daily. “The tow base plate broke off, with the tow base plate separating from the truck frame.”

Fortunately for the couple, the motorhome was stopped at an intersection when the tow base broke off. Sinclair said it “could have been much worse if it failed in motion.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t notice and kept driving, leaving their front bumper-less truck sitting in the middle of the road.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Yup, That’s Us"}]

A video of Sinclair’s RV dragging the Chevy's bumper down the road has been viewed millions of times, with the all-encompassing deadpan caption, “I think you lost something.”

The same person who took and posted the video flagged Sinclair down to let him know he was missing most of his truck. The response to this motoring mishap, according to Sinclair, has ranged from sympathetic to incorrect, irrelevant, and “a lot more trolls showing a lack of empathy.”

“We caught it within about a minute of it happening,” he said. “Yes, we have a rear-view camera which shows the truck, but we don’t stare at it all the time when merging onto a highway and navigating traffic. We didn’t drag it for lots of miles. We’re not rich Boomers.”

Sinclair has been posting videos and blogs online for years. He had a simple summation of the feedback he’s received since the video went viral.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Disappointing, but not surprising,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sinclair Travels"}]

Sinclair and his wife, Jennifer, have been full-time travelers in a Tiffin Allegro Bus Class A motorhome since September 2021. They call their luxury motorhome “Bill the Pony,” while the Chevy Colorado is named “Samwise.”

“We used to have a 5-acre homestead with chickens, ducks, bees, and feral cats,” Sinclair said. “We sold it to travel full-time.”

Since then, they’ve crisscrossed the United States several times. They even took a detour for a campervan travel trip across New Zealand.

The couple works remotely while on the road. Sinclair is an app developer through his company, Dejal, and his wife is a technical writer. 

While on the road, they share stories of their adventures on their personal blogs and post videos on YouTube.

That means the Sinclairs have been through Wyoming multiple times. David called the Cowboy State “one of their favorite states.”

“Wyoming has some of the best freeways, Yellowstone is our all-time favorite national park, and we enjoy Buffalo and Devils Tower amongst other areas,” he said.

The Sinclairs were hoping to reach Alaska when their truck made a break for it. That’s scuttled their plans, at least for the moment.

“Yes, we considered continuing to Alaska with or without our truck, but decided to return home and try Alaska again another year,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Choices Of Master Samwise"}]

After a 950-mile drive, the Sinclairs have gotten Bill the Pony and Samwise home. They drove the vehicles separately to ensure they both made the trip without further incident.

“After sleeping on it, we decided to head home,” David said. “We considered driving the truck separately (to Alaska), or storing it in Fort St. John and renting a car in Alaska, but either would impact the enjoyment of our trip.”

By then, Bill the Pony might be put to pasture. The motorhome mishap has restarted the couple’s conversation about their vehicle of choice.

“We’re thinking about downsizing to a van or B+ anyway, which might work better,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"They might be momentarily immobile, but the journey will continue."}]

“We decided we’d rather come back again in a year or two and do it right,” David said. “We’ll be back to see the rest of Alaska in the next year or two, and would like to explore more of Canada too.”

And if they ever decide to pump the brakes and find a new home, they might indulge in their growing fondness for the Cowboy State.

“If we settle down again in the future, Wyoming is high on the list for where we’ll end up,” David said.

Truck Bumper Mix Collage 13 Jun 2026 08 26 AM 1813 6 13 26

<title>Oh No! Full-Time RV Couple Lose Truck When Front Bumper Tears Off While Towed | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Longtime Yellowstone RV travelers David and Jennifer Sinclair were leaving a gas station in Canada when the front bumper of their truck tore off while being towed. A video of them dragging the bumper down the road has been viewed millions of times. 

Oh No! Full-Time RV Couple Lose Truck When Front Bumper Tears Off While Towed

Kerry Drake

Business & Tourism

Business

LARAMIE — The closure of any rural Wyoming hospital is “an economic earthquake” in a rural state that already has huge holes in its access to health care.

That’s the message Natrona Collective Health Trust (NCHT) CEO Beth Worthen had Friday during a statewide Healthcare Policy Summit at the Hilton Garden Inn.

If that’s true, Wyoming could have up to six tremors — three within the next two to three years — if hospitals now at risk of closure actually shut their doors.

“It doesn't just mean patients drive farther. It means the employer anchoring that town's economy disappears,” said Worthen. "The payroll that sustained the main street, the school funding, the housing market — gone.”

Worthen said she’s worried that the future of these institutions may be impacted by an initiative Wyoming voters will see on their ballots in November’s general election, when they will be asked to exempt 50% of a primary residence’s assessed value from property taxes.

Worthen noted that many of Wyoming’s rural hospitals and the 18 hospital districts statewide depend on local property tax revenue to operate.

They are already dealing with the loss of 25% of property tax revenue that the Legislature approved in 2025, she said.

"That (property tax) revenue is part of what keeps emergency departments open, labor and delivery wards staffed, and the lights on in communities where no private operator would stay,” said Worthen. 

NCHT, Wyoming’s largest private foundation, is not taking a position on the ballot initiative.

But Worthen said voters need to understand that a significant reduction in property tax revenues in a community where a hospital is already operating on thin margins “isn’t a separate question from rural hospital sustainability. It's the same question.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Thin Margins"}]

To understand how thin hospital margins really are, Jeff Sollis, CEO of St. John’s Health in Jackson, shared how much his hospital receives in payments.

Sollis said 60% of the payer mix is from Medicare and 6% from Medicaid. A total of 29% is from health insurance payments, and 5% is self-paid by patients.

"We get paid around $90 million from Medicare and our costs are $120 million,” he said. “Medicaid reimburses us $2.8 million for $10 million of work. We lose about $43.7 million a year from providing services.”

Sollis said it’s only when private insurance pays that St. John’s is able to make up some of the difference, which annually leaves the hospital 5% in the hole.

“We have to figure out how we get to a 5% gain so we can reinvest in our people, our facilities, and technology,” he said. “So, it’s a very challenging set of circumstances.”

At a healthcare summit in Laramie on Friday, one health official said six Wyoming hospitals are at risk of closure. Natrona Collective Health Trust CEO Beth Worthen said closing rural Wyoming hospitals would be “an economic earthquake."

Daily Smile: Sunday, December 31, 2023

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