On the Road - Utah to Wyoming

KOA Campground - Laramie, Wyoming 

Today's tour of states took us through a little bit of Utah and a lot of Wyoming. I saw many tall, skinny, white steeples when we passed by Brigham City, no surprise I guess. My ears started popping as we traversed through the mountains.

 

With the mountains come the pretty mountain streams. It's cool when the highway meanders right next to a rock-laden, swiftly-flowing creek. I imagine travelers from long ago carving out a trail along the stream as it cut a natural path through the mountain passes, and over time the trail became a highway. I saw some white-water rafters floating along. 

We drove right by a neat rock formation called Devils Slide. I didn't get a picture but here's one from the Internet:

Devils Slide, Utah

When we entered Wyoming, all of a sudden it seemed like billboards appeared. Also, wide open spaces. 

With such amazing, expansive views, I'm bummed that the splattered bugs on the windshield mar my photos. We saw spectacular scenery around Green River and Rock Springs in the southern part of Wyoming.

Big gusts of wind on the highway were scary while driving through the Great Divide Basin near the Continental Divide. It was not the most pleasant drive today, especially towards the end with the constant, strong wind. And I wasn't even driving.

We saw more wind turbines near Laramie, and these were moving really fast.

I learned about snow fences, which I had never seen. They are fences positioned to collect snow into drifts to keep it from blowing across the highway. I'm glad we are here in the summertime. 

At the Laramie KOA campground, we had access to wifi; our last two stops did not have it. So we spent time catching up and I was able to publish some blog posts. We also rode our bikes into the cute, western-themed, downtown Laramie and had lunch. It was a cold miserable ride back to the RV in pelting rain. We made use of our "fireplace" to warm up. Then the rain quit, the sun came out, the wind died down, and it was perfectly pleasant. Lucky for the dogs, since they got to go for a walk and take a dip in the Laramie River which was close by. 

This was the first time that we didn't spend any time at all sitting outside at our campsite. The first night it was too windy. The second night it was too wet, plus there was hardly any room between us and the giant RV next to us. So we hung out inside and watched the Olympics. 

Overall, our visit in Wyoming was good. We got to see an interesting variety of scenery and weather.