PINEDALE - The clerks at Obo's Market and Deli in Pinedale have always worn tie-dye shirts as part of their uniform since it opened three years ago.

It's fitting, considering the new customers that keep wandering into the store these days.

The Rainbow Family has arrived in Sublette County, though not nearly in the numbers folks expected, local residents and officials said Tuesday.

"So far, so good," Obo's co-owner Kenny Oberreit said about the Rainbow invasion Tuesday.

The weeklong "Rainbow Gathering of Living Light" on U.S. Forest Service land in the Big Sandy area near Pinedale culminates on Friday.

County residents said the loosely affiliated Rainbow members have been making their way on foot, by car or in the familiar "hippie vans" to Big Sandy for weeks now, passing through towns including Pinedale, Big Piney and Rock Springs on the way.

Thousands of people typically attend the event, which includes music, dancing, food, drugs and nudity, all revolving around the group's theme of peaceful living, non-violence and caring for Mother Earth.

While the last gathering of the Rainbows in western Wyoming 14 years ago drew around 14,000 family members, only between 4,000 and 5,000 have shown up thus far, according to estimates.

"There certainly is a Rainbow presence in town now," Terrie Swift, executive director of the Sublette County Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday.

"For the most part, the original projected numbers that we were given as far as the impacts versus the actual number (of Rainbows) … that number has been considerably less than what we were anticipating," Swift said.

"So compared to the original numbers, I think everybody has been pleasantly surprised that the impact has been a lot less than they were projecting," she said.

Oberreit said for the most part, the Rainbows have been pretty good so far just doing their own thing.

"We've had a few minor problems and a few incidents, which we take care of on a case-by-case basis," he said in a phone interview.

"You're going to get that with any gathering where you have that many people. You'll always have a few bad seeds in there," Oberreit said. "I think the town is seeing some benefits, though. Just like anyone else, they need supplies and stuff (to camp)."

He said some store owners, including Obo's, have placed signs in shop windows prohibiting loitering, backpacks and "spanging," Rainbow slang for asking passers-by for spare change.

"We did put up some signs in front of the store (because) people were asking for spare change and such," Oberreit said. "I just tell them we're running a business and not going to do that here … and they understand and they move on."

Bartender Travis Kinder at the Silver Spur Bar in downtown Big Piney said Rainbow Family members have been passing through town for several weeks.

"They've been slowly coming through … and a lot of them actually come into the bar and spend money, which is real shocking," Kinder said in a phone interview.

"I personally have no problem with them … everybody has a right to do whatever they want, I guess, and that's the lifestyle that they've chosen," he said. "But we're good people up here, and they don't seem to be bothering anybody, so most people have no problem with the Rainbows."

A 'parade of naked people'

Rainbow Family members have assembled on public lands somewhere in the United States every year since 1972. The events have drawn upwards of 25,000 participants at times, and the gatherings have generally been held without formal approval by authorities.

A great majority of Rainbows are passing through Rock Springs south of Big Sandy as they come off Interstate 80, and many are hitchhiking, said Sweetwater County Sheriff Rich Haskell. He strongly recommended that hitchhikers not be picked up by area residents.

"I can't stress this too much," he said. "There's a good reason that picking up hitchhikers is illegal, just as hitchhiking itself is. Stop to pick up someone along the highway who looks harmless enough, and five more people will emerge from the brush. It's a chance you don't want to take."

Dan Budd, a longtime Sublette County rancher and former legislator, remembers the last time the Rainbow Family held its annual gathering in Wyoming in 1994.

His ranch lies adjacent to the Snyder Basin area, located about 30 miles southwest of Big Piney, where about 14,000 family members camped that year.

"I had about 3,000 people camped just around my spread … but I personally didn't have any trouble with them," Budd said in a recent interview.

"They pretty much stayed out of my hair, and I stayed out of theirs," he said.

"They did clean up excellently after themselves after they left, I'll say that for them," Budd said. "But they'd never tell you their real names. It was always 'Dusty' or 'Sky' or something. That's so the government can't track them."

Budd said he remembers a "parade of naked people" descending on Snyder Basin during the July 4 "Circle for Peace."

Rainbow Family members bill the event - scheduled this year for Friday at noon - as a silent circle of people who pray for world peace.

Remember, though, if you're planning to attend, they're on "Rainbow Time."

Which means, for the uninitiated, that events are semi-scheduled and "will start when it starts and not necessarily by the clock," according to one of the groups' unofficial Web sites.

Southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at 307-875-5359 or at gearino@tribcsp.com.