Day Three - Wyoming

Holy cow, I thought South Dakota was big and empty, it has nothing on Wyoming. We knew today was going to be a long drive, over five hundred miles, the first 250 on Interstate highway 90 (we followed I90 all the way from Wisconsin, about 1200 miles on that road), then switching to more local roads for the scenic drive into Yellowstone.

The interstate was pretty ordinary, it rained on and off and the road seemed to be climbing for most of the 250 miles. We'd planned (well google maps had planned for us) to get off the interstate onto Rte 16. All along the interstate there were signs advising that Rte 16 would be very scenic, yay!

The rain actually worked out well, the roads were quite empty, large and mostly straight so it wasn't particularly frightening but it did keep washing the bugs off the windscreen. We were able to keep a steady 85ish MPH along the interstate.

I think we started to reach the Black Hills, we could see them in the distance and then we reached our turn. We seemed to go along a valley for a time then started to go up again. This is what we saw.


Then we really started to head up. Up into the clouds it turned out, it was quite a hair raising experience, this picture wasn't by any means at the worst time. It went on like this for maybe 20 miles, I was getting concerned that it would be that way for the whole 250 miles.

Fortunately though it cleared. I pulled the GPS out of the trunk to see what altitudes we were reaching, we kept going up and up. The car really didn't seem to like it, we have rented a four cylinder Subaru. It's not the fastest thing on wheels even at the best of times but going over the pass we reached just over nine and a half thousand feet. The car wasn't breathing to well. Couple of times we got stuck behind slower traffic but really didn't have enough power to get past until we reached long downhill stretches.


Once the clouds had cleared this really was a picturesque drive, we never again dropped below 6,000 feet, so we were up high. We went past a large hot spring, quickly turned around and took a pic. We really didn't have time to investigate anything. This is definitely a part of the country I would return to. Would be a great ride on a motorcycle.


Eight hours after leaving Rapid City we started to see signs for Jackson Hole, Yellowstone and the Teton National Park. Yep, we had almost got there. I think we spent close to 10 hours in the car but right at the end the views were well worth it. Here are a couple of the Teton Mountains.



And of course, here is the accumulated mileage to date. We are more than getting our moneys worth from the unlimited mileage Hertz rental.