Today, I drove from Casper to Cheyenne in a very round-about sort of way and continued to discover that a majority of towns on the official Wyoming highway map are little more than a bump in the road. Wyoming is just so incredibly empty. It makes Western Nebraska look populated in comparison.
Tomorrow is home!
Far away in another town
I have a tendency to overdo it a bit on these road trips, attempting to squeeze as much exploration into every day as I possibly can. This causes me to change plans and drive further - sometimes much further - which makes for very long days. Today was one of those days.
But it was a very good day, for the most part. I drove through the amazing Wind River Canyon for the second time, the first in over a decade. I visited several very touristy towns and the nearly forgotten Shoshoni. And, due to my aforementioned propensity to always need to see more, I ended up driving through the Bighorn Mountains on U.S. Highway 16. By time I reached my destination in Casper, night had already fallen.
Wyoming is a beautiful, desolate, vast place. There's just so much to see.
The mountains are calling
Today I visited Wyoming's Snowy Range for the first time since a family vacation way back in the summer of 1992. It was far better than I remember, absolutely beautiful and such a sudden change from the high plains on either side of the range. I took a short hike along a boulder field and found myself in awe. A great reminder of the enormity and awesomeness of nature, and the relative unimportant nature of all the little day-to-day stresses that have a way of consuming a person.
This marked the first time I've been in the Rocky Mountains since I visited Colorado in 2010. It was far too long.
I also crossed the Continental Divide to the tiny company town of Wamsutter, one of the few populated places located in Wyoming's Great Divide Basin. Nothing but semi-trucks and flat, sage-brush covered semi-desert as far as the eye can see. And a relentless wind.
Tomorrow comes central Wyoming.
Five hundred miles
From Omaha to Laramie, Wyoming, mostly at 80 mph on I-80. Medicine Bow and the Continental Divide tomorrow!
