Steve was up and raring to go early this morning, so we left at 8 and 61 degrees and headed for Cody, WY, which is where we will stay for the next three nights while we visit Yellowstone NP. I didn't know what to expect from Wyoming. I had not been here since 1966 and have little memory of driving through it. I will admit, I didn’t expect much.

We headed north and into prairie country, a landscape of rolling hills of yellow grass, shaded by blotchy patches of grass trying to be green, but not succeeding much, due to the lack of water. The early morning sun shining on the hillsides causing angular shadows on the yellow walls. We saw some trees from time to time, but for the most part, it was grass…yellow grass. As we rolled with the topography, we passed through low lands as well as hills, and in the lower elevations there was green grass and cattle and an occasional corn field. The herds of cows were small and, despite the immense expanse in which they could roam, they were always seen together. I have decided that cows are social animals. They like company. And where there was a well powered by the wind, that is where they would gather, by the troth. Kind of like workers in an office, gathering at the water cooler, right? I wonder what they were talking about.

The wind in the winter must be rather powerful, because all along the way we saw snow fences, especially on the west side of the road, placed strategically to prevent drifting snow from piling up on the highway. Houses were a rare sight, and when we saw them, they were located on a hill top where owners had a great view or below a hill sheltered from the wind. At one point on the road we saw a sign warning of strong winds and a windsock above the sign to indicate just how strong it was.

We drove through Casper, an industrial town that has a history of being an oil town. They still have an oil refinery and a few oil wells in the prairie, but they now mine coal and uranium. With a population of 57,000, it was the biggest town that we saw all day.

Soon the topography began to change and started looking more like the dessert, with white sand, peppered with silver green sage and in some places, evergreen bushes. Then suddenly we were looking at walls of jagged rock with sand falling away at the base and falling rocks an ever-present danger. The colors were striations of gray and tan and pink. And behind them were mountains in the distance, and Steve asked what mountains they were, and I said, it had to be the Rockies. And that is what they were. We had driven into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

We drove on, and ahead of us was a wall of purple mountains, and I thought, we have to be going right or left at some point, because there is no way we are going over these mountains. But the road continued forward, and we drove right into them and followed the river as it snaked its way through the canyons, rapidly flowing north, creating white water. And we saw rafters paddling down the river in boats. We passed through 3 tunnels cut into the mountain and eventually escaped to the other side of the ridge.

This is why we came. This is what we came to see. And this is what keeps bringing us back again and again. The mountains have a way of filling up my senses and flooding my brain with overwhelming sights. It just blows me away. Wyoming, you gave us a show today. And I will never forget.

We arrived in Cody around 3 PM and settled in for the night. I am posting the best of the many photos I took today. I wish they would show the grandeur of what the eye can see.

Tomorrow, Yellowstone National Park.