Sat 8/27

   This is our fourth day on the road.  Left Minnesota on Wed.  Got as far as Murdo, SD, a small town about halfway across on I-90.  Already the land was quite different.  Gone were the farms with their corn fields and soybean fields.  Gone were the large groves of trees that marked a town or even a farm.  The land now was open and virtually treeless.  The fields were hay or sunflowers.  Yes, we passed many large fields of sunflowers, their bright yellow faces pointing at the sun.
    Thursday we continued through SD, turning south just as we entered Rapid City, which is on the edge of the Black Hills.  I remember coming here for vacation when Dad had a weeks vacation. There are an abundance of family activities to do here, but I always thought of it as a "tourist trap". The flood of billboards along the highway did nothing but emphasize the fact.  Reptile Gardens, Blah Blah Cave, Dah Dah Adventure Park.  They seem to drown out the scenic beauty of the hills themselves.
   At Rapid Cithy we turned south on Hwy 79, to Hot Springs.  We spent nearly two hours at "The Mammoth Site" where they have bones of both Wooly Mammoths and Columbian Mammoths.

From Hot Springs we headed west into Wyoming, through Lusk, unto I-25 for a few miles to Casper, and then west again on Hwy 20/26.  Camping spots did not appear so we spent the night at a rest stop at the edge of an almost dead town of Shoshoni.  Breakfast and fuel in Riverton and continued west following the Wind River as it went from a large following body to a rather small stream as we climbed up the mountains.  It was a great road but we climbed and climbed.  The BRT did a great job of getting up the pass.  The summit was 9600+ ft.  The truck alone has been to 9700 on Steens mountain in eastern Oregon, but this is the highest the rig has been.  The uphill and downhill were both very enjoyable.  Second gear on the steep parts but still ok.

After getting down the mountain we drove to Moran Junction and turned south towards Grand Tetons National Park.  A fire burning in the area of the southern border of Yellowstone has the highway from the Tetons to Yellowstone closed right now.  So our exploring will be around here.  Looking for wildlife and then there are those fabulous mountains!

A moose having lunch.