If you’re going to choose a day to drive across Wyoming, I recommend at day like this one:
Not that we really had a choice. But, wow, what a spectacular day for travel. At least for the three of us overlanders. We left Karen at the Hampton Inn to catch a shuttle to the airport (her flight was at 10:30.) As we drove toward the sun rising over the Wasatch, Kellan asked if the plane we saw taking off was Mom’s.
No, we said. She’s still at the hotel, remember? Turns out, that plane may have been hers after all. For the second day in a row, Karen was foiled by Apple technology. The departure time that Karen put into her iCal calendar on the east coast assumed she was still on the east coast. Her 10:30 flight had actually left at 8:30. Luckily, there was room on a later flight and she was only delayed in getting home by a few hours, and her bags made it too!
Our trek from Salt Lake City, UT to Spearfish, SD took us across some fascinating terrain and through a part of the country that was literally keeping us rolling. Energy companies are at work all over Wyoming, extracting petroleum and moving it so we could eventually use it to take a huge road trip. We followed part of the “Black Gold Byway” from Casper to Gillette, seeing rigs, derricks, oilfield supply depots and plenty of big trucks and white pickups bearing various oil company names. We passed a mobile office being hauled on a trailer. Next to the office door was an industrial sign that said "Days Without an Accident: 2". I recalled Alexandra Fuller's book "The Legend of Colton H. Bryant" about a young man in Wyoming who worked in the oilfields and ultimately lost his life in an accident on a rig. The book is a peek into just how harsh this line of work can be.
This is one of many self-contained office units that we saw out in the high desert and high plains.
Just outside of Gillette, we passed a large coal pit mine and noticed train after train pulling cars filled with coal.
We took a slight detour north to check out Devil’s Tower, the monolith made famous from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Although the geological phenomenon is impressive, it seems that aliens sell better than rocks. Almost everything except for the visitor center was alien-themed. All of this from one movie!
Bluebird day. Perfect for monolith viewing.
No aliens here. Just you tourists!
We certainly felt like aliens in the dry western landscape, but things started to look a bit more familiar as we encountered patches of green heading into South Dakota. Spearfish appears to be a cool little town. We have taken a site in their City Campground, which sits quietly along the Spearfish Creek.
The Black Hills look greener than anything we have seen all day.
If you are ever traveling through Spearfish, SD. The municipal campground is a convenient camping spot!
Tomorrow, we will visit Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. We are “headed for the barn” as they say, with some long days of driving to get back to Vermont, so I will apologize in advance if reports for the next few days are delayed. I will still create posts day by day, but they just may not be so current!