Cowboy Coffee in a Cowboy Town

The EcoZoom Dura Lite once again proved to be the perfect camping stove, this time cooking up some cowboy coffee. Lander, Wyoming is one of the greatest places on earth. First off, I imagine this town isn’t for everyone, but if you like the outdoors, open space, small towns, fresh air, isolation, quaint tree-lined streets, and a good local watering hole then this is the place for you. It’s not easy to get to being that it is situated more than three hours away from the next “big” city, but it’s well worth the trip.

Hiking into Wild Iris outside of Lander, Wyoming with the Wind River Range in the background

Like last trips taken to Lander, the main reason for our visit was the local rock climbing at Wild Iris, which is a beautiful limestone crag, full of solid and fun pocket-pulling routes. We drove in late on Friday night and camped, for free, at the local town park. That’s right, free camping in a luxurious city park with bathrooms and running water. Definitely not roughing it. We woke up Saturday to some shaky looking clouds overhead that we hoped would brighten up with a little coffee. Being that Lander is a little cowboy town, some cowboy coffee seemed fitting. We busted out the EcoZoom Dura Lite that we had in tow and fired it up with some kindling and sticks. It wasn’t more than 15 minutes before we had enough water boiling for 10 or so cups of coffee. Once the water was boiling we added some coffee grounds and let them settle in the bottom of the pot. After a few more minutes had passed we carefully poured ourselves a few cups of coffee, not allowing the grounds to make their way into our cups. Voila, cowboy coffee! With coffee in hand, we jumped in the truck and made our way to the local climbing area, crossing our fingers for some blue skies. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. By the time we drove to Wild Iris the skies were rumbling and dark clouds were moving in. Before long the rain started, which quickly turned to pellet sized hail, and then back again to rain. The weather moves fast through the highlands surrounding Lander, and lucky for us it only lasted a few hours before the sun came out for the rest of the weekend.

Waiting out the storm in the truck with our coffee thanks to the EcoZoom Dura Lite

As always, the EcoZoom Dura Lite proved to be the perfect camping stove. We didn’t need to bring any propane and were easily able to find sticks in our campground to use as fuel for boiling water for cooking. The simplicity and fun that comes along with using the EcoZoom Dura Lite was the perfect complement to a simple yet fun weekend of camping, climbing, and fresh air in Lander, Wyoming.   About the Author: Tom Pritchard is an EcoZoom employee and likes to cook outdoors with his EcoZoom stove on camping trips or sunny days. You can email him directly at tom@ecozoomstove.com.