Weird Things I Did in the Summer as a Kid Growing Up in Wyoming

You may not have even heard of the tiny hamlet I hail from in the Cowboy State, but I'm sure you've driven past it and wondered why anyone would live there. While my earliest memories are in Douglas, Wyoming, home of the Jackalope, my family moved to Wright about 70 miles to the north when I was about 5 years old.

And Wright was where I lived until I moved out for college. Wright is still where I go to visit my dad for holidays. It's as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get in Wyoming, and growing up as a kid and trying to stay occupied in the summer was a struggle.

I would aimlessly ride my bike all over town in the summer. I even remember once getting scolded by my mother for "not looking both ways before crossing a side street," because a neighbor had seen be riding with abandon and phoned my mom. Many of the places on our daily attempt to stay amused would be the Library, the Rec Center, and of course, the Mall.

Yes. Wright, Wyoming has a mall. I'm not kidding. It's not exactly what you'd picture when you think of a mall, but it was indeed an indoor collection of shops and businesses that we loved to run around and cause trouble in. You see, Wright doesn't have a traditional downtown. Instead, all of the main shops you'd see in a cute downtown street are collected in the mall. The grocery store, a hardware store, a few little shops, a laundromat, bowling alley, and post office. All in the mall. Even the Library and only bank were located there before they built their own buildings.

We'd check out as many books as possible at the library, then ride our bikes to the rec center for 1-4pm swim. We once spent hours breaking into an abandoned shed on a vacant lot near our house just to make it into a playhouse. Luckily we didn't get tetanus. When I was a precocious child and my dad wanted to teach me about the political process, I spent one summer going door-to-door with a petition to get new playground equipment at the local park. #nerd.

So while your kids are driving you crazy this summer as they search for things to do in the summer months, be grateful you live in a city where they can find something to do without property damage or, even worse, political activism.