Day 32

Across Wyoming

We got up today around 8:30, packed up, and headed for the north eastern corner of Wyoming. We ate at this all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at Colter Bay, which was the best food we’d had thus far—besides our own food, of course.

I picked up some free papers there where the headline in the Jackson Hole Daily was, “Health care reform definitely illin’.” Another story was about a guy who was mauled by a bear on a trail in the park. This was nice to know, it’s a good thing we’re leaving today.

We left the park on US 26/287 into the Bridger-Teton National Forest heading for Dubois, 55 miles to the east. We crossed the Continental Divide again at the Togwotee Pass, which is 9,658 feet high—not quite as high as Tioga Pass in Yosemite which was probably the highest road we drove on.

Soon we were alongside the Wind River, and we followed it right into the Wind River Reservation. This area is a lot more arid. The evergreen forests were gone now, replaced by low scrubby plains. We followed US 26 into Riverton and then over to Casper, Wyoming.

Some of the towns along this road are the smallest I’ve ever seen. Each town has a sign with the town’s name, the population, and its elevation. Moneta has a population of 5, Powder River has 10 people. How do you have a town with 5 people in it? Everyone must be town officials and they’re probably all related as well.

Hell’s Half Acre is located off this road. No big deal, just a colorful canyon around the Powder River. Now the high peaks are now around 5,000 to 7,000 feet, we’ve left the 10,000-foot mountains behind us now, and I don’t expect to see any more snow on this trip. This meant that the cool mountain air would be scarce too.

In Casper, which is on the Platte River, we picked up I-25 north to Buffalo, Wyoming. The main industry out here appears to be oil. There are wells everywhere, out in the middle of the dry, rolling hills. We turned east on I-90. The first town, Gillette, was 70 miles away. Crossed the Crazy Woman River (I wonder how this river got its name?) and got off in Moorcroft on US 14, about 35 miles away from Devils Tower National Monument.

Devils Tower

We were on the western edge of the Black Hills, so it was a bit more up and down now. Devils Tower Junction is 27 miles up US 14 where we turned on WY 24 and then on WY 110 to the monument. Before the entrance to the monument there is the small town of Devils Tower. The post office here is a trailer. There are lounges and hunting places here also, but the town is only a few buildings, didn’t see any houses.

We drove into the nation’s first monument, preserved in 1906, and were hoping to camp at the Belle Fourche Campground, named after the river that runs nearby. It was filling up fast, and it appeared as though the only sites left were the group sites.

We were debating what to do when the ranger approached us and took the sign that designated this a group site and told us it was ours. This was a relief since it was getting dark and we didn’t feel like driving back and forth looking for a place to camp, only to have to come back tomorrow. We were lucky, we got a nice site too. To the south we looked out on a large meadow in front of the river and a 30 foot wall of rock on the other side of the river. To the north was Devils Tower.

However, with the privilege of using a group site comes the possibility that our next door neighbors will be a group. This was the case but it wasn’t too bad, although they were all preteen kids with one guy trying to control them all. We ate dinner and cleaned up during a windstorm. Lightening could be seen in the distance but it never rained. Everything just started blowing around.