I've delayed this one too long, but at least I have lots of pictures to show.

When I first re-entered Wyoming there were lots of trees as we were at the foot of the black hills.

This is a monument at the first rest stop we used after leaving Rapid City. It's dedicated to the Custer expedition. Made of petrified wood and rocks.


This is a hill at the same rest stop. The large amount of trees and greenery is fairly comforting.


Slowly the scenery started to change, I think this clay hill is gorgeous.


Later, I felt ask though I never left South Dakota, as you can see from the picture, there isn't much difference in scenery here from the initial pictures of South Dakota.


The way that the road seems to fade infinitely into the horizon made home seem unattainable, but I wasn't too worried about that since I knew we were just about to take a crash course in everything there is to see in Northern Wyoming. I wanted to go home, but because there was so much to see, it didn't even feel like we were taking a trip home, it felt more like we were just out to see what there was. I liked it the first time through, but to say that I liked it even better the second time would be an extreme understatement.

The scenery reminiscent of South Dakota quickly faded away. Hills started showing up, then becoming larger and larger.


Not long after crossing the border, we could already see the Big Horn Mountains ahead.


This is a picture of some lake that was on the side of the interstate. It's unusual for me to not know for sure, but I think it's a lake called Lake De Smet.


There were two routes across the Bighorns that would take us to Yellowstone, Highway 16 and Highway 14. Highway 16 was  advertised on road signs as more straight and safe, but our GPS and maps told us the 14 would be faster (and looked like it would be prettier).

We stopped for Gas in Buffallo, which is at the Highway 16 exit, to make our decision. When I picked up some snacks and juice, I overheard the cashier explaining to a man with an RV that she recommended 16 and that 14 was too scary for her to take in a car.

I'm not sure what 16 looked like, but 14 was very beautiful, though with all of the switchbacks, I can understand why it was advertised as the less favored route.

Right after we left the interstate for Highway 14, we passed through a town called Ranchester, right at the foot of the mountains. The town had a population sign which indicated it's population was somewhere around 25. I've honestly never seen someone bother putting up a population sign for such a small number, but my hope is that they did it to scare off anyone who would be bothered by such a thing.

Anyway, here is a picture of the road leaving Ranchester to wind up the Big Horn Mountains.




These two picture is a few switchbacks up the moutain, there was a vista point that looks off into Wyoming's eastern front for eternity.

This one looks South down the range. You can see a couple portions of the road switching back.


This one looks west over the plains, the beige ribbon below is the portion of road where I took the first pictures of this highway, right outside of Ranchester.


The road continued to wind in a switchback pattern until we were at about 7500 feet, where the range seems to mostly flatten out. Along the road there are countless places where you can pull out and see rock formations and read boards that talk about some scientists stupid idea about how the rock formation got there and how old they think the rocks are. Only, they present it as scientific fact and I know that they are really just making a best guess. Scientists are more frequently getting into the habit of doing this, I'd much prefer if they just admitted when they weren't sure. It doesn't make the rock formation any less fascinating, but maybe for them they just can't allow themselves to stand in awe of something that they don't understand or can't explain.

At 7500 feet, there was still snow, even though the temperature was holding steady between 70 and 80 degrees. It's impressive that the snow gets packed so thick that the snowpac can last so long in some areas.


Brandy didn't believe me when I told her that it was snow when we first saw it, but after we passed a few patches that were very close to the road, she was convinced. Abby and Poncho weren't very excited about it though.


I think the dogs used Brandy's pillow more than she did during the trip.

As I was saying, the top of the range seems to be very flat and grassy. There were some thick trees around, but for the most part, the area we passed through seemed like marshy grassland, but as the road started to descent, it returned to the familiar switchback style that first introduced us to the Big Horn range.

As slow going as travel may have been in these conditions, the desert side of the range boasted much more impressive rockery and rivery, as it were.


I don't have any pictures of the rivers we passed by, but this ridge fascinated me. It looked like it was straight once and then someone just pulled something out from under it and it broke in half.


Here is a closer look at the "break" in the ridge. In the very bottom of the valley, you can just barely see a bit of our road ahead, just above the guard rail.


Further up the ridge, another ridge splits off and comes to a commanding point.


Somewhere down in that valley, there is a big river. I like the way that the rock faces have such different colors from sandy brown to red.


In some of the pictures you can see that the road is very red in color. This isn't a problem with the camera, but I haven't been able to find out why the roads in this area are red. I assume it's because they mix some of the red clay soil or rocks into their asphalt, spreading the crimson hue from the mountains and dirt into the roadways.

Once we got out of the range, the scenery turned to high desert, which resembled what the state of Wyoming looked like when I first saw it, driving through the southern portion.

We stopped continued along 14 to the town Greybull, where Highways 14, and 16 merge together. We found a gas station that also served food. To be precise they were a combination Taco Express, Pizza Express, Burger Express and various other express things, basically meaning you could order whatever you wanted. I had two super chicken burritos and Brandy had a taco salad supreme. For a place that serves food in a gas station at rock bottom prices, it was surprisingly good food.

From there we continued along US 310, which was just a combination of Highways 14, 16 and 20. There isn't much to be said about anything between Greybull and the last town before yellowstone, Cody. Basically just more cattle ranches and some scattered grass fields. The only notable occurence was a lighning storm that consisted of one very thick, dark cloud floating around making hundreds of jolts.

At this point, my lunch break is over, and you've got plenty to digest, so I'm saving Yellowstone for my next entry.