Monday, September 13, 2010

September 13, 2010












Last night I put on my my warmest nightgown before I went to bed and this morning I still had it on. The temp had dropped significantly to 39 degrees. We watched the local weather and the high today in Casper Wyoming was 82 degrees. We still have a long way to go, north and colder climate. We got back on the road pretty early.
Casper, Wyoming is about the size of Hattiesburg and in just a few minutes we were back in the boonies. Open rangeland as far as you can see. The Pronghorn Antelope are everywhere. They graze in the fields just like cows and since there are no trees or bushes are easily visible. No sport to hunting here. They just stand there and look at you and wait for the bullet.

Mountains were very far in the distance but Randy spotted snow on the tops. My sister has been tracking us with Google Earth and has been giving us information about whats ahead. And things to see.
We first hit the mountains on Wind River Indian Reservation. The road followed the Wind River at the bottom of a canyon and there were 3 tunnels through the mountains. At the end of the canyon lies Thermopolis, home of the worlds largest mineral hot springs.


We arrived at Greybull around 12:30 central time. The road workers were out and we got backed up in a little traffic. We came through Greybull on our last trip when we were on our way to Yellowstone. They have an old airplane museum there, WWII war planes. We passed it on the way through town and then back out into the plains.

Montana is desert like in the southern area and near Billings which is spread out but built against a shea rock face. We had to drive up Highway 3 which climbed along the edge…up and over the face of the mountain. At the top we stopped to admire the scenic view of Billings. Our truck took the mountain like a breeze, even though it was a slow breeze.

We also came upon a wind farm, giant wind turbines. They are awesome to watch and many people object to their presence but great for the environment.

The landscape has changed somewhat, from desert like to more mountain like with some trees and streams and rocky outcrops. We can see the mountains we are headed to but they still seem very far. It has taken so long to get here and I’m not sure that we’ll be able to stay as long as I would like. The first day we drove for about 13 hours, the second day only 8. it’s a 40 hour drive and it’s taking 5 days to get there. If it took 5 days to get here and 5 days back…that only leaves a couple of days at Glacier. We’ll see.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What beautiful pictures... I miss yall. Stay warm and stay SAFE!!