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Bill Sniffin forgets to retract the claw from his new RV as he attempts to park outside the Cowboy State Daily newsroom.....

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One More For The Road: Saturday, May 23, 2026

We warned Andrew Rossi from jumping off the cliff next to Cowboy State Daily, but he wouldn't listen....

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One More For The Road: Friday, May 22, 2026

When Bill Sniffin, Andrew Rossi, and Mark Heinz all show up to the Cowboy State Daily news meeting at the same time.....

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One More For The Road: Thursday, May 21, 2026

As we're coming up on a three day weekend, remember to look out for drunk drivers....

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One More For The Road: Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Following both Andrew Rossi and Bill Sniffin to the morning news meeting yesterday....

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One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Close call this morning when Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi almost runs over Clair McFarland.....

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One More For The Road: Monday, May 18, 2026

Tragedy strikes when Andrew Rossi, inexplicably driving a train, and Bill Sniffin, inexplicably driving a septic truck, arrive to the Sunday news meeting at the same time....

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One More For The Road: Sunday, May 17, 2026

The best tow truck commercials we've ever seen....

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One More For The Rod: Saturday, May 16, 2026

Live video footage of Andrew Rossi taking out the trash.....

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One More For The Road: Friday, May 15, 2026

Live footage of the Cowboy State Daily news team heading to the morning meeting but Bill Sniffin is hogging the road.....

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One More For The Road: Thursday, May 14, 2026

If you're going to be a speed camera, be this speed camera.....

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One More For The Road: Wednesday, May 13, 2026

CSD Staff

Maybe a fork lift with a Corvette 427 is overkill….

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One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Public Lands

So many dead trees are piling up on Wyoming’s remote wilderness trails, some outfitters are saying they should be allowed to use chainsaws to clear them rather than toiling for days with old-fashioned hand tools.

They argue the buildup of dead timber has exceeded the Forest Service's capacity to remove it in a timely manner, particularly with the agency's recent staff and budget cuts.

Allowing chainsaw use on a limited basis could solve the problem, some say. It’s already been tried – most recently this spring in the 2.3 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho.

However, opponents argue the rules are clear about keeping designated areas strictly primitive under the 1964 Wilderness Act – no machinery of mechanical devices of any kind.

Not even bicycles are allowed in wilderness areas, opponents say, so why should an exception be made for chainsaws?

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dead Trees Everywhere"}]

Pine beetle epidemics have torn through forests across the West, leaving dead trees everywhere. Thy frequently fall over on trails, or blow over in huge piles.

The Forest Service and volunteer trail associations across Wyoming 

That’s especially true during the spring and early summer, as hikers and equestrians head out on trails where trees have been dropping all winter.  

The task is made more difficult by orders of magnitude in wilderness areas, where only hand tools are allowed, says Dustin Stetter of Dubois, president of the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Misery Whips’"}]

The main campsite for his company, Stetter Outfitters, is about 20 miles from the nearest road. It’s for summer camping excursions and a base camp for hunting trips.

Stetter and his crew could typically clear the path for the first camping trip in June. And they could do so using old-fashioned hand saws, axes and two-person crosscut saws.

Crosscuts are huge saws with a handle at each end, which operators can continually by alternately pushing and pulling.

Stetter said he once heard an old-timer outfitter call crosscut saws “misery whips” because running them for hours can be utterly exhausting.  

With the amount of dead tress left in the wake of the pine beetle epidemic, the days of clearing trail on the way to camp are over, Stetter said.

“It’s gotten to where we can’t do that anymore. We have to send an advanced team in to clear the trail ahead of time,” he said.

It can take more than a day, and sometimes must be done in the spring and again in the fall before hunting season.

“I think one year we cleared 120 trees just to get to our camp, Stetter said.

“We get along really well with our Forest Service office (in Dubois)," he added. "It’s not a matter that they won’t clear the trail, it’s just that they might not have the time or resources."

In May, the Forest Service granted a request from the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association to use gas chainsaws on roughly 542 miles of trails in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. 

The agency cited “extraordinary levels” of downed trees as the reason for a temporary suspension of the ban on mechanical devices, 

The Missoula, Montana-based Wilderness Watch organization opposed the move.

“The Forest Service made this decision after a year of secret, behind-closed-door negotiations with the Idaho Outfitter and Guides Association with no public comment or environmental review, and little regard for federal laws, including the Wilderness Act,” Wilderness Watch said in a statement.

Wilderness Watch is circulating a “sign-on” letter opposing chainsaws in wilderness areas, which it stated has been signed by “nearly 100 conservation and trails organizations, as well as dozens of former agency wilderness rangers and specialists.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Budget-Slashing"}]

The problem is rooted in cuts to the Forest Service, Julia Stuble, Wyoming state director for The Wilderness Society, told Cowboy State Daily in an email.

“People deserve the freedom to get outside and access our shared wilderness areas, and the Wilderness Act already allows for careful, case-by-case consideration of chainsaw use through an agency minimum tool analysis where needed to help maintain that access,” she wrote.

“But while people debate chainsaws in this instance, the administration is taking a chainsaw to the public land workforce itself — slashing staffing levels, starving budgets and closing office doors. That is the bigger threat to public access, and it is exactly why we are focused there,” Stuble added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Going Electric?"}]

Chainsaws come in three performance grades — in ascending order, homeowner, ranch and professional grade.

Electric chainsaws were once limited to a few smaller models that had to be plugged into an extension cord.

Recently, however, electric chainsaw technology has advanced considerably. 

A variety of cordless, battery-powered units can out-pace gas homeowner saws, and compete with ranch-grade gasoline-powered saws.

Stetter said electric chainsaws might be a good option for allowing saws into wilderness areas when needed without disrupting the “primitive atmosphere” of remote areas with screaming gas engines.

It could be done, he said, on a limited-permit, case-by-case basis, strictly for clearing trails at specific times.

Allowing the broad use of chainsaws in wilderness areas would spoil those areas, he said. 

Wilderness Watch spokesman Matthew Koehler told Cowboy State Daily that his group opposes allowing even electric chainsaws into wilderness areas.

That’s because they still qualify as mechanical devices and undermine the intent of the Wilderness Act, he said.

Chainsaw 7 11 26

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

<title>As Dead Trees Clog Wyoming Wilderness Trails, Some Argue For Using Chainsaws | Cowboy State Daily</title>

So many dead trees are piling up on Wyoming’s remote wilderness trails, some outfitters say they should be allowed to use chainsaws to clear them rather than working for days with hand tools. Chainsaws have been banned from those areas for 62 years.

As Dead Trees Clog Wyoming Wilderness Trails, Some Argue For Using Chainsaws

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A one-of-a-kind dinosaur footprint site near Newcastle was vandalized by someone who would have gotten permission to do what they did — if they had asked.

Kristen Stauffer of the “Paleo Park” Zerbst Ranch discovered the vandalism this week. Someone poured a large amount of blue silicone into one of the many dinosaur tracks exposed on a 67-million-year-old slab of rock on the Zerbst Ranch.

“I was shell-shocked,” Stauffer told Cowboy State Daily. “Nobody was authorized to be out there. Whoever did it was trespassing.”

Setting aside the enormous scientific value of the fossil, Stauffer was “heartbroken” by the blatant disregard for her family’s history. The Zerbst Trackway was found by her father, Leonard, and has enormous personal significance to her and her family.

“These tracks are part of our family's story,” she said. “We have spent years protecting them because we believed people would love them as much as we do. We opened our gates because we wanted to share something truly rare, not because we wanted pieces of it taken away.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not The First Time"}]

The Zerbst Trackway is one of the most extraordinary fossils of its type. It contains trace fossils from multiple dinosaurs and other animals that lived in Wyoming during the Late Cretaceous period.

Identified trace fossils include the footprints of the ostrich-like Struthiomimus, the tail swish of a crocodile, and one of the few known footprints from Tyrannosaurus.

The crown jewels of the Zerbst Trackway are the footprints of Saurexallopus zerbsti, a large bird-like caenagnathid or “oviraptor,” named in honor of the Zerbst family.

The vandalized footprint was left by a large hadrosaur. Stauffer had an idea why somebody might find it interesting.

“It definitely has impressions of the pads of the dinosaur’s foot, along with a toe drag,” she said. “All of the molding materials were around that print, and someone had poured blue molding material into it.”

Molding and casting are processes used to make replicas of fossils, preferably without damaging the original.

Whoever was responsible for the failed mold was covertly trying to get a copy of the hadrosaur footprint. Their intent was to leave the original there and make off with a replica, even if they had to trespass to get it.

They were also presumably hoping to find a way to reproduce and profit from a rare dinosaur fossil without sharing the proceeds with the Zerbst Family.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s theft. "}]

Stauffer was, at least, relieved they didn’t try to chisel the footprint out of the rock. It would be extremely difficult to do, but that hasn’t stopped people.

“When we realized the Saurexallopus tracks were from two dinosaurs walking side by side, someone came and tried to take one of them out of the foot-thick rock,” she said. “They destroyed it. It was one of the only ones in the world, and they destroyed it.”

Stauffer isn’t sure who tried to make a mold of the hadrosaur track or when they attempted to do it. She said she believes it had to have been within the last month.

What’s truly baffling to Stauffer is that she wouldn’t be opposed to someone wanting to make a mold of the unique dinosaur footprint. If they’d asked, she probably would have said yes.

“If they had come to me and said they had a crazy idea to do a mold of it, I would have wanted to do it,” she said. “I like stuff like that. Let's do it together. Let’s make this work. But they decided to go the shady way.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Stealing Statues"}]

The 7,000-acre Zerbst Ranch has been in the family for five generations. Charles Zerbst homesteaded there in the 1890s, and it’s been their home ever since.

Stauffer has spent the last year working on a rebrand of “Paleo Park” to honor her family’s legacy while utilizing their ranch to its fullest potential.

“We're trying to diversify so dinosaurs aren’t the sole part of our ranch,” she said, “We’ve had different folks wanting to come out to do yoga and bird-watching retreats, and there’s a lot of interest coming in.”

That’s why the timing of this vandalism is especially discouraging. For Stauffer, it feels like a violation of trust after decades of readily welcoming people from all walks of life to enjoy her family’s legacy.

“It’s the audacity of doing something like that,” she said. “It’s like sneaking into somebody’s yard to make a copy of a statue you really liked. I would never in my life think that I could go into someone's private place to do something like this.”

The good news is that the rare hadrosaur footprint doesn’t seem to be permanently damaged, Stauffer said. She had already removed most of the blue silicone that had been abandoned there.

“If they had done a better job, I probably wouldn't even know that someone took molds of the tracks,” she said.

Leonard Zerbst eagerly invited people to enjoy his ranch and its treasures. Stauffer knows her father would be proud of how the family has kept his legacy alive by bringing school groups and excavation teams from across the country to have a life-changing moment.

[{"type":"text","text":"That makes this brazen act all the more upsetting."}]

“If you ever stood beside those tracks and felt that moment of wonder, we're asking people to understand what was lost here,” she said. “Trust was lost. A little bit of hope was lost. And a place we loved sharing with complete strangers suddenly doesn't feel as safe anymore.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Changed Before You Leave"}]

The Zerbsts have been doing two-hour tours of their ranch, including a visit to the Zerbst Trackway, for years. After discovering trespassing, vandalism, and attempted theft, Stauffer decided to close the trackway indefinitely and is questioning whether they should continue offering tours.

“The old saying is true: one bad apple really can ruin it for everyone,” she said. “We’re still going to ponder what to do, but we’re going to start implementing things to protect the tracks. They’re too precious.”

Meanwhile, the ranch is still open to curious minds with genuine intentions.

The Zerbst Ranch has produced some of the best Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils ever found. Those include one of the best-preserved Triceratops specimens ever, complete with large patches of skin, and two Edmontosaurus mummies from the newly discovered “mummy zone.”

“We want to go out and let others go out to do more prospecting,” Stauffer said. “The idea that there's another mummy out there somewhere, looking for some air, is exciting.”

Stauffer’s greatest delight is facilitating someone’s first experience with the prehistoric past, coupled with the legacy of her family’s Wyoming ranch. She described the exhilaration she felt when she helped a group of college kids from California find their first fossil, a stingray tooth.

“It's funny to sit back and watch the ranch do its magic to them,” she said. “Seeing that look on a kid's face when they find their first tooth or a fragment of a bone is what makes me happy.”

Despite the breach of trust, the ranch will remain open to people willing to explore with integrity. According to Stauffer, that’s exactly “where Mom and Dad really wanted (the ranch) to go.”

“I always (tell visitors) that the ranch will change your life before you leave,” she said. “You might not know it, you might not realize it, but it will change in a slight way before you leave. And then they’ll say something and realize that the ranch changed them.  

[{"type":"text","text":"\"That’s what we want to keep and preserve as best we can.”"}]

Dinosaur site vandalized IMG 8213 7 11 26

<title>Newcastle Family 'Shell-Shocked' By Vandalism Of Rare Dinosaur Footprints | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A trespasser trying illegally to make a copy of rare dinosaur footprints on the "Paleo Park" Zerbst Ranch near Newcastle ended up vandalizing the site. “I was shell-shocked. “We have spent years protecting them,” said the owner.

Newcastle Family 'Shell-Shocked' By Vandalism Of Rare Dinosaur Footprints

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

A Gillette mom believes this summer and early fall likely represents the last chance she’ll have to make memories with her daughter who is battling a life-ending condition.

Plans for road trips that would allow Londen Tabor and her daughter Autumn, 20, to drive the Badlands, camp in the Black Hills, go rock hounding across the state, and travel to North Carolina to see family in their 2000 Chevy Suburban are on hold because the SUV's transmission just died.

“I was driving along and thought, ‘Are you kidding me,'” Tabor said when the vehicle broke down. “The Suburban is completely out now, and it just feels like the world is against me.”

If the transmission hadn't failed, a short camping trip using the Suburban in May to an agate festival in Montana revealed that the heat, space, and mosquitos — coupled with her daughter being in the last stage of juvenile Huntington’s disease — meant taking the Suburban across the country was not going to work.

Tabor, 43, hasn’t given up on making that last road trip happen and is 

Autumn was diagnosed with the disease in 2018 at age 12, which also is the same year that her father, Justin Fender, died from the same condition at age 36. 

Tabor and Fender never married and had broken up in 2008, but Tabor said he moved to the Gillette area to be near their children, Autumn and her brother Logan. Her oldest son, Dakota, also considered him as his dad.

Tabor married her husband Chris in 2014, and he adopted Autumn.

Seeing the disease that took Fender now gripping her only daughter “breaks my heart,” Tabor said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disease’s Impact"}]

The website for the Huntington’s Disease Society of America says the disease affects brain cells, resulting in changes in personality, coordination, behavior, speech, or the ability to learn, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Tabor has witnessed all of that in Autumn."}]

Tabor said her daughter went from being a cheerleader in her freshman and sophomore years of high school to a measured decline that has brought her to a place today where she is totally dependent on Tabor for care.

Young people with the disease typically decline five times faster than adults, she said.

“It’s crazy, because you go from 2018 and then 2019 and 2020, and there are these little changes,” she said. "Up until about 2021, she could still ride a bike.

"Then we got her a three-wheel bike, but it was only a year that she was able to ride it.”

 with Autumn that was meant to share their journey with the disease and educate others. Over the years, they’ve gathered 160,000 followers.

The mother and daughter in 2023 turned a journey that included a Huntington’s Disease Association event into a 6,280-mile trip from Wyoming to Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas and a stop at the White House. 

They made the trip in Tabor’s small Kia Soul, stayed in hotels, and made a couple of media appearances.

But to use the Kia now would be much more difficult. 

Tabor needs to transfer Autumn in and out of the vehicle and put her wheelchair in it.

Tabor said sometimes it’s hard to look back on her TikTok posts because they show the rapid progression of Autumn’s disease. 

But the social media platform has also forged new relationships they never would have had before.

During their 2023 trip, Autumn and her mom visited and stayed with an Arkansas woman who they had connected with over the social media platform. They hope to visit her again this year.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@londenandautumn/video/7580103755614489886" data-video-id="7580103755614489886" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@londenandautumn" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@londenandautumn?refer=embed">@londenandautumn</a> Trying to find the light through all the darkness. :broken_heart:  <a title="juvenilehuntingtonsdisease" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/juvenilehuntingtonsdisease?refer=embed">#JuvenileHuntingtonsDisease</a> <a title="huntingtonsdisease" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/huntingtonsdisease?refer=embed">#HuntingtonsDisease</a> <a title="jhdawareness" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jhdawareness?refer=embed">#jhdawareness</a> <a title="jhdwarrior" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jhdwarrior?refer=embed">#jhdwarrior</a> <a title="huntingtonsdiseaseawareness:blue_heart::purple_heart:" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/huntingtonsdiseaseawareness%F0%9F%92%99%F0%9F%92%9C?refer=embed">#huntingtonsdiseaseawareness:blue_heart::purple_heart:</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ Light of the Soul - SANTANA J.L.M" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Light-of-the-Soul-7398942910102865937?refer=embed">♬ Light of the Soul - SANTANA J.L.M</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Agenda"}]

Tabor’s initial plans were to go on a rockhounding trip across Wyoming on their way to Salt Lake City for the National Youth Alliance’s juvenile Huntington’s disease retreat later this month. 

She’s bought tickets for a Benson Boone concert in Casper in early September. Her daughter is a big fan.

Later in September, the plan called for a monthlong road trip to the East Coast to visit her sons and Autumn’s brothers in North Carolina, Tabor’s family in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a stop at the Omaha zoo in Nebraska, and the drive to Arkansas.

“This is like the last chance I have to do this with my daughter,” Tabor said. “I just want a couple of months with my daughter (where) I don’t have to worry and I have a climate-controlled vehicle that I could pull over and feed her.”

In the meantime, Autumn’s decline continues. Now, she's finding it harder to swallow.

to rent a camping van from late this month through October for the trips was difficult.

She did not want to have to ask for help from others, but it seemed like the only viable solution.

“I know what this disease does. I know how fast it progresses,” she said. “I know where we are at, and it’s not looking good.”

The trips are not about a “luxury vacation” on wheels, but an attempt to provide a safe environment and allow her daughter to “get out there and live life to the fullest while she still can,” Tabor wrote in her GoFundMe post.

She appreciates those who have already responded, which as of Saturday is at $3,327 of a $9,000 goal.

Tabor, who for a couple of years experienced her own health issues and had to leave a position taking care of finances at a dental clinic, stays home and looks after Autumn. 

Her daughter goes to a “day-hab” a few days a week with others who have disabilities, she said.

The hardest thing for Tabor remains thinking back to Autumn’s “normal years” before the diagnosis and having to watch her transformation under the disease.

“I don’t know what’s worse, just having something you have to face your whole life or to have this beautiful, amazing child, and then all of a sudden have her just start to be ripped away from you,” Tabor said. “To be ripped away slowly and slowly until there is nothing left and to know what she could have had.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Last trip Mother Daughter 7 11 26

<title>Last Road Trip For Gillette Mom And Dying Daughter Derailed By Broken-Down SUV | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Gillette woman's plans for one last summer road trip with her dying daughter have been derailed by a failed transmission in their 26-year-old SUV. But she's not giving up hope. “This is the last chance I have to do this with my daughter,” Londen Tabor said.

Last Road Trip For Gillette Mom And Dying Daughter Derailed By Broken-Down SUV

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Entertainment

[{"type":"text","text":"It started with a selfie."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"That's the funny part of the story, said Bradlee Skinner."}]

The remarkable part came years earlier, when the former Wyoming high school English teacher was homeless, delivering pizzas and wondering how his life had unraveled.

Today, Skinner spends his weekends DJ'ing in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans for the Savannah Bananas, the wildly popular baseball entertainment phenomenon that has become one of the hottest tickets in sports.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's been amazing,\" Skinner told Cowboy State Daily."}]

The job has taken him from Wyoming classrooms to iconic ballparks such as Coors Field in Denver and soon Wrigley Field in Chicago, where he rubs shoulders with performers and entertainers he once showed his students as examples of creative excellence.

It's a journey Skinner never could have imagined when life hit rock bottom more than a decade ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Rock Bottom To The Classroom"}]

Green River's Bradlee Skinner was homeless, delivering pizzas and wondering how his life had unraveled. Now he performs before sold-out crowds with the Savannah Bananas, baseball's wildly popular entertainment phenomenon. And it all started with a selfie.