An Adventure Across Wyoming

August 15, 2016

Overall Mission: Two cousins heading to Seattle from Ohio by car, stopping at many National Parks along the way.

Miles Driven: 450 miles
Hours Driven: 9 hours
Goal of the Day: See as much of Wyoming as possible
Journey: We drove from Deadwood, South Dakota, through Sundance, Wyoming, to Devils Tower National Monument to Buffalo, Wyoming, through the Bighorn Mountains and National Forest through a little town called Ten Sleep to Cody to the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park, ending the night at Lake Yellowstone Hotel.

Day 3: From Deadwood, South Dakota, to Devils Tower to Bighorn Mountains to Cody to Yellowstone National Park

Animals Spotted: Buffalo, pronghorn, horses, deer, sheep, chickens, a wild ferret, geese, lots of birds, and tons and tons of cows.

Notable Sightings and Events:

• Walking around the town of Deadwood, South Dakota. A brick road of modernized old hotels and businesses turned into bars and restaurants, surrounded by mountainous hills of green.
  

  Deadwood, South Dakota

• Red highways in parts of Wyoming

• An abundance of naturally growing black-eyed Susans along the roadsides

• It rained with snow cone-like hail outside of Buffalo, Wyoming, just as we started to ascend into the Bighorn Mountains. This was the largest and hardest hitting icy hail we have ever seen. Scary, amazing stuff!

The Beauty of Wyoming:

• Wyoming is an expansive state of rolling green hills and valleys, intermixed with plateaus, red rocks, and majestic, beautiful mountains laced with prominent trees. The entire state “looks like a giant, gorgeous postcard,” said Cousin Todd.
  

  Beautiful Wyoming

  

  Beautiful Wyoming

  

  Beautiful Wyoming

  

  Beautiful Wyoming

  

  Beautiful Wyoming

  

  Look out for the sheep! (Wyoming)

• Devils Tower is a gigantic, mysterious, natural statue of beauty. A powerful force of nature, this spot definitely feels like a great Zen-like or meditative spot.
  

  Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming

  

  Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming

• The Bighorn Mountains, mighty and beautiful, contained a series of rock formations that were labeled to share their age. We saw 2.3-billion and 3-billion-year-old granite.

• Throughout the mountainside, and especially at Powder River Pass (elevation 9,666 feet), when stopping for pictures, we could hear and then finally witnessed lots of crickets making a clicking-like sound. We explored the source of the noise after asking over and over, “What is that sound?”
  

  Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  

  Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  

  Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  

  Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  

  Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

• Once we left Cody, Wyoming (hometown of the recently interviewed Righteous Vendetta), we drove through a tunnel at the Buffalo Bill Dam at the edge of the mountains and seemed to emerge into a whole, new world in the valley leading to Yellowstone. The view of the valley and mountains are almost indescribable in their extreme beauty in the stretch from Cody to Yellowstone. Mixtures of sharp, rocky mountainsides with plush forestry and some rocks that almost looked molded. I can’t recall how many times we said, “This doesn’t even look real!” Some parts even looked like a glimpse into an ancient world.
  

  Leaving Cody toward the Buffalo Bill Dam, Wyoming

  

  After Cody, Wyoming, heading to Yellowstone National Park

  

  After Cody, Wyoming, heading to Yellowstone National Park

  

  After Cody, Wyoming, heading to Yellowstone National Park

  

  After Cody, Wyoming, heading to Yellowstone National Park

• We entered Yellowstone National Park through the East Entrance, saw several buffalo and deer, and made it to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel moments before nightfall, scoring the last room in the entire park. We called it crazy luck; the hotel clerk called it good karma. After an exceptionally fantastic dinner at the Lake Hotel Dining Room and a few killer glasses of Moose Drool, we called it a night.
  

  Heading into Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  A Buffalo inside Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  Remnants from a Forest Fire inside Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  A Buffalo inside Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  A Buffalo Rolling in the Dust inside Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

  Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming