September 2: Wyoming Again

We started the morning in Pocatello, Idaho, and moved into Wyoming almost without notice. Rolling hills, no hills, lots of sage brush, irrigated fields. It is easy to know where the water is—it's green. Everything else in barren. But then we had an adventure!

Eons ago, in the Eocene Period, a large area of Wyoming was a large, shallow lake, with conditions much like South Florida, but minus the retirees and Cubans, of course. Crocodiles, sting rays, snakes, turtles, bats, tropical plants, frogs, small mammals, and fish abounded. As they died, they fell to the bottom of the lake, and sediment quickly covered them.

Live was wetter then, and the climate more temperate. Years passed, and the animal and plant remains were pressed deeper and deeper into the silt. But change is always inevitable, so a few million years later, Fossil Butte is all that is left of their happy little world. And Wyoming is high and dry—subject, of course, to the effects of global warming.  So, visit while you can.

Seriously, there is an excellent Visitor Center with many good pictorial and other exhibits, including a good film. This site is well worth visiting.

As we continued through the wastelands of Wyoming, we saw a huge limestone quarry, accompanied by the requisite cement processing plant.  This area probably provides cement for the entire northwest, since so much of the rock there is basalt and granite and the like.  We also passed some oil/gas pumping places.  

In some ways, rural Wyoming is like Appalachia, without all the trees and bushes to cover all the worn out cars and tractors and machinery of all kinds.  The towns we passed through had anywhere from 200 to the big metropolis of Laramie, some 20,000.  We're sleeping here tonight. The homogenization of America is complete, depending on the size of towns. Some rate a Home Depot and these usually have Ace Hardware, beauty shops, taverns, gas stations, and flower shops. The population of smaller towns could almost be determined by seeing what amenities they have.  Towns under 400, for example, never have flower shops and may have only one tavern! We're enjoying this slice of Americana.  I'll never feel the same way about the far west. I think I've gained at least a little appreciation of who populates these landscapes, from lovely farm and ranch land to desert wastes.  I'm not planning to move here; I'm not that intrepid!

We ended the day with finishing our quatrain began in Yellowstone:

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam.

Today we saw places:

Where the deer and the antelope play.

Saw lots of antelope enjoying the ranch grasslands.

It's a great trip, but we are getting tired. The next two days will be homeward bound—I think about 700 miles a day.