Stopover: Crossing Wyoming
Leaving Yellowstone, I had planned for us to spend about two days making our way across Wyoming. This was another part of the country neither Eli or I had seen before, having previously flown into the western part of the state, limiting our visits to the National Parks. I fell in love with this rugged state in the process and may well be making plans to retire here.
It took almost two hours to drive east from our campsite to the town of Cody, Wyoming. Most of that time, we were still within the boundaries of Yellowstone, before our cell phones alerted us with a myriad of buzzes and bings that we had finally emerged into civilization again.
We made a quick pitstop in Cody before continuing on to the small town of Greybull where, my uncle Gary, aunt Ginny, and cousin Matt met up with us for lunch. They live in Billings and had planned a two day trip south to explore an interesting dinosaur museum and to see us. They knew of a great restaurant in town where all of us – seven people and our four dogs – could sit out on a patio and catch up.
After lunch, our plan was to meet them at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite, just a few miles outside of town. My uncle had heard of this place where a myriad of dinosaur tracks are preserved in the rock.
Unfortunately, we arrived at the site, but my family missed the turn and got lost. By the time we all met up again, we just said quick goodbyes and got on our way.
Our drive continued that afternoon through the Big Horn mountains, from Ten Sleep to Buffalo, where I again was left thinking, “Why have I never visited here before?” And also, “How difficult would it be to buy a little patch of land and live out my days in Wyoming?”
We crashed out that night at a wonderful KOA in Buffalo that had everything we needed to reset after our many days away from modern conveniences.
The next morning, we stopped at Devil’s Tower National Monument on our way towards South Dakota. We had (a surprisingly tasty) lunch on a patio that overlooked the monument and then the kids and Eli did a short hike at the base of the tower while I hung out with Toby (who was not allowed on the trails there). I want to show the kids the movie Close Encounters, or at least the clip where Richard Dreyfuss sculpts Devil’s Tower out of his mashed potatoes on his dinner plate. I think they will enjoy having that cultural reference point.
As we entered South Dakota late in the afternoon, we began our last real stop of this long journey: We’ll spend a few days in the Black Hills, visiting Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and Custer State Park before continuing on to the Badlands. We have just a few more sleeps – and only about 600 miles to travel – before we will be home again.
