A lot of Wyoming!

September 8 – We got up at 7 and surprising to Bill we were on the road at 8:03.  It got

Wind River Canyon

colder than we expected so I turned the heat on and also the engine heater. It had about an hour to warm up and the RV started right up.  We turned right out of the RV park and headed down the road through the beautiful Wind River Canyon.  The river carved a deep gorge for 2,000 years and then the granite and other rock were blasted to put a railroad on one side of the river and a road with tunnels on

Wind River Canyon

the other.  It was a much longer drive through than I had expected and Bill took a lot of photos but through the window.  Today was over 400 miles and we didn’t want to make any more stops than we had to.  Wind River is an Indian Reservation and the canyon is part of it.  At the southern end is a huge dam, which of course had an even larger lake behind it.

The lake is Boysen Lake and there is a Boysen State Park along it.  One of the campgrounds in the park is on the shore of the lake.  Looks like a really nice place to camp.  The lake backs up and forms various fingers so the park is huge and has multiple campgrounds around it.  It took a while to get passed the lake and then it was a

Road to Casper

boring straight 2 lane drive to Shoshoni, WY.  It’s a tired run down little town with very few businesses still operating.  From there we headed to Casper, WY.  Now if you look at a map you will wonder why we went south to go east and the answer is the 2 routes from Cody east are over mountains that we found would not be fun in the RV.  Even our friend Newell warned us against the route he had taken.  So that’s why it was a 400+ mile ride today.

The mountains we avoided

We stopped at one of the parking pullouts for a bathroom break and small snack and after we passed Casper we stopped at a regular rest area on I-25 in Kaycee and had lunch.  Then it was I-25 to I-90 at Buffalo, WY and then west to SD.

Today was the day for 2 things:  pronghorn antelope and road kill.  I have seen more antelope than I could ever imagine.  There were herds of all size in the fields on both sides of the road and I never tired of watching for them.  Some would be in fields with the cattle even.  Now the roadkill, well, I saw 5 skunks and I haven’t seen 5 dead skunks in my entire life!  There were 4 raccoon, well over 100 rabbits, 4 birds and 10-12 venison.  The only one I was sure what it was is a buck deer because of his large antlers.  It’s such an open space on all the roads today that the poor things must run out at night and then they are goners!  I gave up counting the rabbits!  There were places that had one every 10-15 feet.

Bill took a lot of video and photos but since it’s through the windows, they don’t look the best, but again, we didn’t want to keep stopping.  We arrived in Sturgis, SD at 5, so that wasn’t too bad.  We cannot believe how different it is here than when we came about 10 years ago.  Either we were in a very different part of town or the town has grown and changed drastically.  It was little old buildings of tattoo parlors, shirt shops and bars and now it all looks so nice and new.

We had some of our leftovers and fresh corn on the cob so dinner was easy.  I started on my photos and posting while Bill read and then he got busy on his computer catching up on facebook and email.