Oregon Trail: Wyoming Day 1

Thursday morning was the coldest so far on our trip, down in the 30s and a far cry from the 50s and 60s up to now. But it was also beautifully sunny as we left Spearfish SD bound for Cody WY to set us up for Friday in Yellowstone National Park. As we rolled west on I-90, I was reflecting on the Black Hills and was looking for a way to convey what they are all about when I spied this hill. You can see in the photo below that the Ponderosa pine-clad hills rise from the tawny prairie, looking black from only a short distance away.

Goodbye Black Hills

As we approached Wyoming, we saw a small herd of deer on our right grazing in agricultural fields and a herd of pronghorns on the left. Although we only saw 8 antelope the day before, we would see hundreds on our way to Cody and beyond into Idaho. Prongers seem to have an affinity for sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, which with its silvery gray green foliage, was becoming a constant feature of the prairie as we moved west.

Hello Wyoming!

In the early morning light, we could see clearly a long, long way and as we pushed into Wyoming, Ann would see her first mesa. There's a lot of discussion about what's a mesa, a butte, and a plateau and though not everybody uses the words the same way, they generally all refer to ancient plains that have eroded away, leaving a flat-topped geologic feature. Generally if it is wider than it is tall, it's a mesa and if it is taller than it is wide, it's a butte. A plateau is on a much, much larger scale. In any case, we've got nothing like this back east.

Annie's First Mesa

Speaking of buttes, Devils Tower National Monument is a great example. I was zoned a bit in the passenger seat when Ann asked if I knew what Devils Tower was, that she had just seen a sign for it on the side of the road. Never having seen "Close Encounters," I actually did not know what it was right off but a quick internet search was enough to pique my interest. And it would only cost us an hour and we had a least a couple hours of slack in our travel day, needing only to make it as far west as Cody. So we left the interstate at Sundance WY and headed north to find Devils Tower.

Devils Tower in Context Some 15 Miles Distant

Devils Tower Perhaps Three Miles Distant

Longhorn, Excited to See Us? Not So Much

At the Entrance, A Mile Distant

Stopped at a Prairie Dog Town

On the way to the Visitor Center, we stopped at a prairie dog town to watch the little fur bundles do their thing for a few minutes before continuing on to have a large flock of turkeys cross the road in front of us.

Curious Prairie Dog

The massive Devils Tower butte sits upon a layer of iron-rich stone called the Spearfish Formation that is particularly exposed near the entrance to the park and later on again on the south side of the butte. The red rocks were particularly beautiful in the strong morning light when we visited.

Red Spearfish Formation

Beautiful Rock Formations

Annie Poses on Boulder Field at Base of Tower

As we got out of the Jeep to walk the dogs and then go have a look at the tower, I asked a passing ranger if the tower were columnar basalt like I had seen in other places. Our good old boy ranger, Bud from Appomattox VA, told me that it's a similar igneous rock called columnar phonolite. When magma cools very slowly, it sometimes forms 5- and 6-sided columns. Devils Tower was apparently never a lava flow, but an intrusion of magma between two other layers of rock, rock that has since eroded to leave the harder phonolite still standing.

We had no idea that we were in one of the premier crack climbing locales in the US until we spied at least eight climbers headed up. Devils Tower is also a sacred place to many Native American tribes. Climbers have voluntarily agreed to suspend climbing for the month of June out of respect for the tribes.

I wish we had longer to explore the area. There are several hiking trails near and around the tower that I would have like to have walked on such a gorgeous day, but Oregon was calling us and we still needed to get there on Monday, with Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons to see along the way.

Climber Belaying Another

Once back at I-90, we started making for Gillette WY, the next town of any size. Just east of there, we saw our first pumpjacks and would see them sporadically in Wyoming and Idaho. I had figured to see many more pumpjacks on our trip, but that's just as well. From my days in Texas, I remember how badly we scarred the earth in the oil fields and I have no need to see that again.

Aside from a bit of rain here and there and a couple hours of heavy mist in the UP, we've had a fortunate run of weather along our journey. We've experienced a couple hours at most of rain out of tens and tens of hours of driving. I know that bad weather is always a possibility in the Rockies and although it is super early, I am prepared for snow. I've been snowed on in the Sierra in July, so in discussing what clothing to bring with us in the Jeep with Ann while back in Virginia, I promised her we would encounter snow, no matter how far fetched that might seem in the heat of a September day back east.

And speaking of weather, from Gillette we could see the Bighorn Mountains on the horizon 75 miles to the west capped with ugly gray cloud cover, not a promising sign. We had already heard that Yellowstone was closed part of the day yesterday for snow and they're expecting a foot more today, more in certain places. Snow was clearly visible on the shoulders and peaks of the Bighorns.

The further west we went and the higher we climbed, subtle though the climb may be, the more texture the landscape had: gulches, canyons, rolling ridges, bald buttes, and mini mountains. Flatland was disappearing with each mile west especially west of the Powder River. The only green to be seen was the odd juniper tucked into a fold of the land along with a few stunted and gnarled cottonwoods along creek bottoms.

At Buffalo, the sky is leaden and gray clouds are massing over the Bighorns. Here, we have to commit to a route to Cody. Either we cross the Bighorns and Bighorn National Forest on the southern end using US-16 or we continue another 50 miles north and cross on US-14. For miles along I-90, we have seen warning signs along the road advising that the safest and fastest way to cross the Bighorns us by the southern route, US-16. As it looks like we are driving headlong into an approaching storm, I opt for the southern route.

On US-16, we head up into the mountains climbing higher and higher. As we climbed, we added to our collection of novel to us road signs. In Michigan and Wisconsin, we saw the snowmobile crossing signs and then in the last day, we had seen both bighorn sheep and elk crossing signs. Today, we added the "Open Range/Loose Stock" sign, not a comforting sign as you are ripping along at highway speed.

Although we didn't encounter any cattle in the Bighorns (we would the next day a couple of times), at 8000 feet, we did spy our first elk along the road, a spike buck. We also saw our first definitive mule deer including a buck with a monster rack. It's almost impossible to separate mule deer, blacktails, and whitetails when zipping down the highway, but these mule deer seemed related to Grace in that their ears were so big.

As we bested 9000 feet, we encountered snow on the hillsides and road shoulders. But fortunately, the sky that looked so bad merely showered us with a little rain on the way up. By the high point of US-16 at 9666-foot Powder River Pass, sunny skies had returned. We stopped and walked the dogs and admired the snow in September.

Snow on the Mountains

Just Playing at 9666' Powder River Pass

As if the drive up into the mountains were not spectacular enough, one of the awesome sights along US-16 across the southern end of the Bighorns is descending through Tensleep Canyon on the west side down toward the Bighorn Basin. Although I had never heard of this canyon, it is simply amazing; it left me slack-jawed awestruck; and our photos do not do it justice. Long favored by climbers as a top destination, Tensleep Canyon has imposing dolomite walls that rise hundreds if not thousands of feet above the floor of the canyon. I was sincerely jealous to see vehicles parked at the many trailheads along the way with our not having the time to hike this amazing canyon.

Dolomite Walls of Tensleep Canyon

Further Down in the Canyon

Nearing the Bottom of Tensleep Canyon

West of the town of Ten Sleep, we headed for Worland, one of the towns in the middle of the very arid Bighorn Basin. The Basin is extremely flat and quickly becomes agricultural: big irrigation rigs dominate the immediate landscape all over the basin and the area is checkered with bright green fields. Some of the fields were clearly pea-leafed alfalfa but the majority of the green acreage had large beet leaves. I've never seen sugar beets before but there is no denying what they are. They must not be red: the stems are bright green, telling me that the beets must be white or perhaps yellow.

Pronghorn Doe in the Bighorn Basin

Good Shot of the Horns on a Buck Antelope

Another interesting thing that I noted is that the flat basin seems to be rimmed with a gray or yellow-gray (sandstone?) uplift with almost no top soil as if it had been scoured clean by a glacier.

Uplift Surrounding the Bighorn Basin

The sunny skies that joined us as we near the summit of the Bighorns would hold until 30 minutes out of Cody when high cloud cover returned. Fifteen minutes later it was raining lightly. We stopped at Pat O'Hara Brewing in Cody for a late lunch/early dinner where I had a really nice IPA by Snake River Brewing in Jackson Hole. I had no idea at this point that same time tomorrow, I would be sitting in Snake River Brewing in Jackson Hole having the very same beer. As we left the brewpub, we were treated to a full on cold rain, a sign of things to come.

Beers at Pat O'Hara in Cody

Aside from our quick stop at Devils Tower, we did nothing really touristy on Thursday except to cross the spectacular Bighorns and Tensleep Canyon on US-16, Cloud Peak Scenic Byway. By design Thursday was a travel day to get us across Wyoming to Cody to set us up for a day in Yellowstone and then hopefully the Grand Tetons and Snake River Canyon on Saturday, leaving us two days to get across Idaho and Oregon.