Our Trek Across Wyoming

Thursday morning, we left our ranch lodgings (11 degrees!) and aimed our car for Sheridan, Wyoming, via Cody. Our route took us along Lake Yellowstone, then out the eastern entrance to the park.

We had thought it would be a pretty flat drive across Wyoming, but turned out to have interesting rock formations and lots of scenic segments.





We stopped in Cody to visit the Buffalo Bill Historic Center, highly recommended by everyone we talked to. It is a very well done cluster of five museums--Buffalo Bill, Western art, natural history, Plains Indians, and historic guns. An interesting stop.

We were using a AAA TripTik for the first time in decades. They have no topographical information or indications, and the map I had was not very detailed. Let's just say we bumped into more mountainous areas than we had anticipated.

We traveled on the Bighorn Scenic Byway, and it was quite spectacular. We kept climbing and climbing. The temperatures kept dropping and dropping.





Then it started snowing. We watched the temps plummet. Then we climbed into the cloud that was providing the snow. So now we were in 23 degrees, snowing, and heavy fog. It was about 5:30pm, and the light was pretty dim in these conditions. Our destination was just 40 miles ahead, but was feeling very distant at this point. We hoped to drop down out of this situation pretty quickly once we crested at 9,033 feet. Unfortunately, this particular pass is open range land and went on at the same height for 15 miles. Our windshield was iced up from the snow and freezing fog, and it was very hard to see. It was a tense time on the top of Granite Pass, but we eventually did drop down enough to get out of the fog. We came back down out of the Bighorns on a steep (8% grade), curvy road. We had snow until almost the valley floor. We were very thankful to arrive at Sheridan, a bustling town.

Views south of Sheridan.




We were now headed for Mount Rushmore. We kept getting light snow off and on throughout our drive. By the time we got to Custer, South Dakota, it was snowing heavily. The road was covered in snow, and the temperature had dropped to 28 degrees. We had planned to visit Mount Rushmore as we came into the area, but since it was snowing hard and it was unlikely we could have seen the mountain, we opted to search out a place to lay our heads instead. When we emerged from dinner in Keystone, it was clear out so we did head up to the mountain and paid a visit to the Presidents.






When we looked out our window the next morning, we were greeted by a light snow, a couple flocks of wild turkeys, and a nice view of George.









We headed up to Mount Rushmore to visit the Presidents more properly. It was about 30 degrees out, so we had to keep moving briskly while we were there.








This is such an American, iconic monument to visit. It's one if those places you've always heard about and seen images, but it's quite special to actually see it in person.


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