August 1, 2008 – Found Another Beautiful Drive

Okay….I drove 12 hours today. Left Cody, WY at 6:00 AM and arrived in Grand Island, NE about 6:00 PM. And I’m tired!! But I wanted to write about my travels today.

From Cody, I took the scenic drive to Thermopolis (they are famous for dinosaurs). Actually this part of the drive isn’t very scenic. But I was absolutely amazed when I left Thermopolis on US 20/US 26. This road goes through the Wind River Canyon, and it was beautiful. The river was great, the canyon was amazing with huge rocks, and both the railroad tracks and the road went through a series of tunnels cut through the rock. I’ve included a couple of pictures I got off the Internet, because my camera batteries went dead and none of the little convenience stores along the way had any batteries for a digital camera. If you get out this way, try this drive.

There are several things amazing about Wyoming. The first is that the north and western borders of the state can be so beautiful, and how the rest of the state can be so UGLY. After leaving Wind River Canyon, you come to a huge lake (big dam on the river). Then the land turns dry, dead, and just plain ugly with very little grass (and it’s all dead), sagebrush, and sand – absolutely no trees – I think they require water to live. And almost the entire state looks like this. You keep driving and driving and it is all you see – and I mean hundreds of thousands of acres. There are a few cows spread out (it would take a lot of acres per cow to keep them), and of course there are oil wells. All brought to you by Haliburton, that “infamous” company associated with making tons of money in Iraq and Dick Chaney (VP of US). For a while, that was all I passed was Haliburton vehicles.

The other amazing thing is that the ROADS ARE SO GOOD. If you look on the map, it looks like these are very small roads going through the middle of nowhere (well, that part is true), and I figured I would lose a lot of time here. But you can drive 70 MPH (actual speed limit), and don’t run into that many cars. As if there is someone slower than you, the roads are straight, flat, and you can pass like a freeway.

Also when you look on the map, you see towns along the way. Today I went by Molenta, Hiland, Waltman, Powder River, and Natrona. All of them except Power River had a total of ONE BUILDING in the entire town. They are actually smaller than my town of Nye, MT.

And the start of Nebraska isn’t any better. It’s also dry, dead, flat, no trees, no water, and ugly. At least in Nebraska it eventually gets water and turns a bit green. But it is as flat as a pancake. It is amazing how quickly I left the mountains in northern Wyoming, and then they were just gone. I’m sure I will survive, but I have felt “withdrawal” all day.