Adventures of Lynn & Dan: Beautiful Wyoming

Wednesday August 17, 2011

Somehow we got rolling at 6:30 AM this morning! I’m glad we did as it took an hour to get up to I-90. We made Devil’s Tower in time for a 9:30 Ranger led walk around the Tower. As always, they add those extras that make it really interesting. A couple of pictures follow.

The guy that shot this for us laid on the ground on his back. Amazing that he would do that!

OK, this is where the trip got interesting from a towing standpoint. We exited onto Wy 14 and were at about 4500 ft. We needed to climb to 8900 feet to get over Granite Pass, so more truckey testing. Although the speed limit is 65 mph, you cannot drive it that fast unless you have a death wish. The road is very twisty and narrow. Most were driving about 40 mph, thankfully. On those 10% grades we could keep up at 40 but needed 2^nd gear at about 4500 rpm. Oh am I happy I bought the 4.3 axle! Additionally, all temps stayed in safe range, 220F or lower. What really surprised me was I didn’t burn any oil. That Motorcraft stuff is only 5W20.

The scenery was awesome!!! Canyons, mountains, big rocks, wow-wow-wow! I almost turned around just to see it again,….. just kidding!

Finally got on the Wyoming plains, about 120 miles of it. We passed through towns with a population of 10, and they had a Post Office, no wonder USPS is going broke! It is pretty deserted, we did not even see a car for like an hour.

We arrived into Cody at Absaroka Bay RV Park about 7PM.

Thursday August 18, 2011

Today we went to Old Town Trail, a reconstruction of a late 1800s town built on the original Cody townsite. It contains buildings from all over Wyoming. Big personalities were Jeremiah Johnson, Robert Parker (Butch Cassidy), and Jim White. I included a couple of pictures. It was pretty interesting.

We then traveled a little ways to see the Bill Cody Dam. It dams the Shoshone River for irrigation of the Wyoming plains, and provides power to the area. The dam is 325 ft high making it 2^nd only to the Hoover Dam. It was built over 5 or 6 years. Lots of challenges, apparently the river is too high April – September from ice melt. So all work is done from October to March. When completed in 1910 it was -10F. They had to figure out how to set cement at that temperature! A couple pictures below.