Day 32: Travel Day to Yellowstone's Door

5/24/2017

The road ahead. 10am, no traffic

Day 32: Travel Day to Yellowstone’s Door

Sal and I pulled out of Casper mid-morning in beautiful sunshine. Looks like it’s going to be that way for the next few days. Glad to see it; touring Yellowstone in the rain didn’t sound like fun.

On our way to Cody, WY we passed by/thru several interesting areas, the first being Hell’s Half Acre, just west of Casper. The formations in this relatively small area (320 acres) reminded us of what we saw at Bryce Canyon 2 years ago.

Continuing on west, we turned at Shoshoni to follow US 20 north/west, traveling first thru Boysen State Park and past picturesque Lake Boysen, then thru Wind River Canyon a few miles north. This gorgeous, rugged landscape found us going “wow” and “look at that” for many miles. Simply beautiful country.

Our final stop on our journey toward Cody was Hot Springs State Park just north of Thermopolis. The park claims to be the world’s largest mineral hot springs. Not sure how they arrived at that but we’ll take their word for it. This was a good warm up for today’s activity, exploring in Yellowstone.

I remembered that my family passed thru Thermopolis and Yellowstone when I was 12 years old. It was a bit eery driving the same road I traveled with my now-deceased parents and my sister in the summer of ’62. Time truly does fly by.

We had planned to stay at a hotel near the park entrance but a series of snafus with that hotel caused us to go back to Cody for 2 nights. It’s a half-hour further to the park but a much better lodging situation.

Yellowstone explorer today for me while Sal stays behind to work on her art and prepare for our show opening. She was here about 4 years ago with her daughter and granddaughter vs. 37 years ago for my last visit, so she’s a bit less interested in exploring today than I am.