The place where we stopped for gas and a quick eat-on-the-fly breakfast turned out to be the best experience we had in Sheridan.
Well, that and getting on the interstate to get started on putting another day’s driving behind us. We were at the point where the end of our trip actually could start to seem real, not just some imaginary future event.
Have you ever driven across Wyoming via Interstates 90 and 25? If so, what was your opinion of the scenery? It’s really a matter of personal taste, but one indication of how much Chris and I have in common is what we both thought of the scenery. We thought it was gorgeous. Lest you think my “poorly made bed” comment about Montana was unkindly meant, the countryside along I-90 south of Sheridan inspired me to pick up my radio microphone and observe to Chris that it looked like an even more poorly made bed, to which she readily agreed, adding that it just made it even prettier. Which had been my point.
Our first challenge of the day, once we were underway, was negotiating the I-25 split at Buffalo. With Chris in the lead, we approached the interchange, but saw the correct ramp too late to take it. Fortunately, I had idly scanned an inset map of Buffalo in the Sheridan phone book the evening before, and remembered that U.S. 16 heads out of town to the east, with interchanges on both 90 and 25, so without seizing the lead I talked Chris through taking that exit, heading back toward Buffalo, and getting onto I-25. Yet another lucky break for us on this trek.
I think it was after this that, as we motored along at 70 mph, I happened to glance at an animal ambling alongside the highway on the other side of the ditch, and recognized a pronghorn antelope. Startled, I picked up my microphone and asked Chris if she had seen it. She hadn’t. I saw three more at somewhat greater distances before I was finally able to spot two on a ridgeline far enough in advance to direct her attention to them via radio. It was really quite thrilling.
Then we saw more. And more. And more. When we pulled off at a roadside rest area near Kaycee, there was a small herd of pronghorns grazing in a pasture with two horses, easily seen from the rest area parking lot. By the time we were another hour down the highway we were bored to tears with seeing antelope. Are ranchers actually raising those things along I-25, or what? Or maybe they congregate along the highway in September because it’s safer there than out on the open range where they’re hunted. Your mileage may vary. But I can imagine Wyomingites in those parts being as blasé about antelope as Alaskans are about urban moose.
At length we came to Casper, and the striking rock wall that rises behind it as you approach it from the north. They call it mountains, but to me it looked like a plateau rim setting off the valley of the North Platte River from the higher country to the south, not too much unlike Billings. Sadly, what I’ve seen syndicated in other newspapers from the Casper Star-Tribune suggests that town has more in common with Billings than just rimrock, although at least they’re not editorials.
We had no need to stop in Casper, so we swept on through and out to the east, the highway’s southward march abruptly blocked by that wall of rock. It was still hot, but gradually throughout the day we had begun to see clouds that looked like it might be trying to start raining. Torrents of virga were streaming down from most of them — but as virga does, it evaporated in that dry Wyoming air long before it reached the ground. Still, the theory is that virga creates evaporative cooling that results in a heavy, chilled downdraft where the rain would have fallen. So as we paused at Douglas for gas and lunch (yes in that order), and inspected the thickening cloud cover and its lengthening beards of doomed attempts at rain, we judged that the local heat wave was about to break. We did encounter a brief shower as we left Douglas and followed the interstate’s gradual southward turn around the flank of the Laramie Range, but we didn’t know until we reached Cheyenne, checked into our room at the Hitching Post Inn, and tuned in The Weather Channel that there was more in store than cooling downdrafts and spotty showers.
We splurged on dinner in Cheyenne, eating at the steak restaurant in the hotel. I had a buffalo steak. Tomorrow we would make the big eastward turn and cross into the Central Time Zone.
