A red SUV with a camper top rests in a driveway off a partially paved road just west of Casper.

In the front yard, children play in a sandbox as a schnauzer mix rests on the grass.

The father, a plumber, returns from an appointment. The mother, who runs a day care out of their home, picks up the son, a toddler wearing a Spider-Man hat and a blue T-shirt. A yellow lab licks the daughter, and she groans, wiping her wet, blonde hair away from her face.

A normal family, if not slightly busier than most, they eat dinner at a dining room table and watch TV from a comfortable gray couch in the living room.

And once a year, almost every year, they join other families for a week of praying and singing, freedom and fellowship.

They are one small part of the Rainbow Family, which is gathering this week in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Sublette County.

Keith and Leigh Ann Lewallen met at a Rainbow gathering in 2000. Two years later, they married at a gathering. Two years later, they brought their daughter, Kyra, along to a gathering, and she said her first words.

Though they only stay for a week or so, the Lewallens feel most at peace when they leave behind the world of cell phones and laptops and cars, they said.

"Everybody looks at these people as being with no hygiene and dirty and homeless, and have no real purpose of life, but I don't look at it that way in the least," Leigh Ann Lewallen said. "Every type of person is there. There are rich lawyers there. I'm going to go to school to be a teacher. Usually in society that causes a lot of friction, to have all those different people, but for us, it's the only place to find total peace."

Common stereotypes about the group, she said, are unfounded and unfair.

"We have the freedom to do things the way we want," she said. "We have a right to pray the way we want. We have a right to gather in a national forest, and there's no reason to be upset or angry over it. They [critics] should join us. That would be the best thing."

The Rainbows don't use money, Keith Lewallen said. Participants trade for everything from food to musical instruments to diapers. Lewallen will bring a collection of precious stones to trade for some jewelry for his daughter this year, he said.

On the living room wall, a detailed pencil drawing of the couple at their wedding hangs next to a studio portrait of the children, their hair neatly combed and their clothes pressed as they smile in front of a wintry background.

The Rainbow gathering this year will truly be a family event - minus the dogs, who will stay home with a friend. Keith Lewallen isn't worried about bringing toddlers to the gathering, because violence and crime aren't any more a problem than they are in everyday life, he said.

"There's no fighting. There's 30,000 people who gather together, and they don't fight," he said. "You can't get 200 people together in a bar in this town without a fight breaking out. Rainbow is a safe place. It's great."

Despite their love for the gathering, the Lewallen family will only stay for about a week. Leigh Ann can't close her day care business for too long, and Keith is saving his paid vacation time from work for a family trip to Cancun later this year.

"You could technically live as a Rainbow, but most of these people live as you or I. They're just … normal," Keith Lewallen said. "They work and they get away to this place, wherever it is that year, mostly as more of a peaceful vacation."

"The Rainbow is not out to make people angry," Leigh Ann Lewallen agreed. "The whole purpose of the Rainbow gathering is to pray for peace. We're all individuals that gather together to pray for peace and Mother Earth, and that's not a bad thing."

Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0589 or megan.lee@trib.com.