Wyoming: Beef Country

With The Badlands and more recently The Black Hills behind us, we were in pursuit of our final destination, Jackson! According to our trusty atlas that we purchased somewhere in southern Minnesota once Ryan’s iPhone map app. started being useless, with only several hundred miles to go we estimated we would get to town around 5pm at the latest. However, we really had no idea what to expect on this last leg of our journey.

At this point in the trip we were accustomed to seeing land like this in South Dakota. And seeing odd land art was something we had gotten used to in The Badlands.

What was really impressive was seeing from afar the mountain range that was in our path and would have to be crossed. The Bighorn Mountain Range was an impressive sight to see rising straight up from the high dessert floor and spanning as far as the eye could see left to right. This was definitely something neither Ryan nor I had ever seen firsthand.

The drive up the mountain was impressive mostly because I knew that I was about to be at a higher altitude than I had ever been on land (Volcán Pacaya, Guatemala - 8,373'). The scenery was cool but having seen so many national parks and such a wide array of land in the past 48 hours, I was only moderately impressed. That was until 2 deer sprinted out in front of us going about 65. Luckily, I saw them briefly creeping out of the woods before their skittish sprint and quickly slammed on the brakes. Seeing signs for “Open Range / Loose Stock” several more times throughout the rest of the trip would from now on put me on edge. But seeing this made me forget all that for just a moment. A moment for the record books.

In contrast to the slightly above average scenery we got on the drive up, once past the pass, the drive became memorable due to the deep gorge we would exit the mountains through. We stopped on several occasions to capture the majesty and were treated to several passes through mountain tunnel roads (which I have no pictures of since I was playing the role of chauffeur)

Once out of the Bigohorn Mts., the landscape became all too familiar again: plain, high dessert, but with a twist. Unbeknownst to me, as arid as Wyoming is, Boysen Reservoir is a massive body of water that sits just outside of the Bighorn Mts. I definitely didn’t feel like we were in Wyoming.

We were now only one mountain range away from being in Jackson and as the sun started to set, we knew we were going to miss some impressive sights. That being said, it was remarkable to see the sun set so fast as Ryan had said we would be sunless is 20 minutes only to watch it disappear behind the mountain range in 2! Sadly, after snapping this pic, I knew my Sony point and shoot was done for the night.

The drive through the last range was nerve racking as Ryan was driving, it was pitch black, there were barely any motorists around, there were signs for “Loose Stock” everywhere, and almost an hour of driving was on completely unpaved, rough road where we had to slow down to 20 mph often so as to not harm the Camry at this stage of the game; worst case scenarios were racing through my mind. At least everyone else we saw crushing the rough road in big pick-ups and SUVs were at ease.

Taking my mind off all of the horrible scenarios racing through my head was how bright it could get at night being so far away from any sort of civilization. When there are no clouds at night, the moon does it best job to impersonate the sun. It is so damn bright out at night here. So when we started to approach Jackson, I happened to notice a large shadow to our right that once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized was the Grand Teton staring us in the face! Man how I wish we had driven in with daylight.

Once in Jackson, it took us only a couple of minutes to find our new home. It was now after 9:30… After emptying out the Camry, it was off to the nearest watering hole to finally have that beer we had been envisioning for hours and hours of driving. At last we were home.