What a treat to have spent some quality time in Wyoming. We had never been to Wyoming (or MN or SD for that fact) and it was like nothing we'd seen before. I have been working on my pronunciation of the state. For some reason, I've always said, "Why-O-Me" like a question, But, my husband insists it's "Why-O-Ming" like it's spelled. I'm a work in progress.
On the road to Yellowstone we were advised to check out Devil's Tower, the first national monument. It had a huge prairie dog field that our little prairie dogs loved watching. Did you know that prairie dogs have one of the most intricate communication systems among mammals? They have sounds (aka prairie dog words) for man, man with gun, for every different predator and lots of other things. They are constantly chirping to each other. I am pretty sure if I were an animal, I'd be a prairie dog.
We took a short walk around part of the base to stretch our legs and imagined what it would be like if the path was the hallway in our house and the crannies between the rocks were the rooms of our house.
There are ceremonial scarves tied to trees by the local Native Americans. They have a legend that a giant bear tried to get people who retreated at the top of it. The tower saved the people by it's sheer height, but the bear left the claw marks all over it's sides.
This began the part of our trip where we drove for hours and hours through winding roads that had intermittent cell coverage. We were happy to watch the mountains and interesting terrains. Ok, honestly, the kids minded a bit. Below is a pic of driving through Big Horn National Forest at about nine thousand feet. It had tall snow markers on the sides, we can only imagine are there to help people find the road in the winter. We also saw lots of fences along the highways in the fields to prevent snow drifts on the roads.
Driving through the mountains we happened upon the lovely, Shell Falls.
We stopped for the night in Cody, Wyoming, named after Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually was born in Iowa. The locals are so used to tourism, they have your night all planned out for you. At 6pm there's the story of Buffalo Bill reenacted with lots of shooting (too loud for our little ones - we left after ten minutes). At 8pm there's a rodeo (too late for our crew). These are put on every night for the months of June and July.
Cody has painted buffalo (can we call them bison since that's what they are?) all over the downtown. We saw this one and Junia said, "Hey! It's like, 'What's black and white and red all over?" That kid cracks me up!
Summary for Global Thinkers Pained by Excessive Detail:
Hours logged on the road thus far: 32.5
Miles so far: 1700 (I know! Those winding mountainous roads took 8.5 hours to drive 380 miles!)
States we were in "today": SD, WY
Running total of states: 7
Sanity Status: In denial? I began to dread Oregon today. I truly just didn't want to ever get to Oregon. I just wanted to be on the road for forever. I think dealing with unpacking and a new place seemed daunting and being on a vacation trip is where it's at today.
Mood: The children began to crumble today, just a bit.
Major Incidents: 0
What we see this second or a brief summary of the day: For being an all day on the road day, it was pretty full of interesting sites. We are loving seeing antelope here and there, the mountains mesmerize us and we are still soaking up all the new terrain. The novelty has worn off for the kids and irritability has been a frequent passenger in our station wagon.
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