Ten Sleep, WY: under the heat dome

Day 22: June 14, 2021

Ten Sleep RV Camp; Ten Sleep, WY 

We had a beautiful drive through the Big Horn National Forest and over the Powder River Pass (elevation 9666 feet) to arrive at our current abode in Ten Sleep. (I’d never heard of Ten Sleep either; trust me, we’re only doing Two-sleep in Ten Sleep!) The scenery was stunning. I wish I had a photo of any one of the many fields of those purple flowers (they kind of reminded me of short lupine in passing by). But I found one scrawny bunch and that made me ridiculously happy.

It’s 10-30 degrees hotter than normal here right now. We put the AC on in the RoadHouse. I just gave up as, even if this is a “dry heat” (in Ohio, that’s all we hear about: in the West, it’s a “dry heat”. Let me just say that triple digits is hot and I don’t care what the humidity is!). I get very very cranky.

Enjoy these scenes taken mostly from a moving vehicle but also on a couple of pullouts. The scenes in the mountains change with every curve in the road and it’s all quite beautiful. We saw deer today but not elk or moose as promised by the WATCH OUT FOR road signs.

Rocky Mountain Penstemon is what I thought looked like “short lupine” from the side of the road, whizzing by....

Arctic Alpine Forget-Me-Not, with a little yellow flower, and, rocks

Snowfield to the left, rock formation to the right, the BAT, Dan, and the RoadHouse

Light and Shadow—A better view of the snowfield

We stopped in Buffalo, WY to make lunch. Just pulled over on a side street and made up some sandwiches in the warm confines of the RoadHouse. There were Wyoming state flags everywhere, along with American flags. I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable going in to eat lunch at a place there. A couple of the signs on businesses in town read (1) “RINOS NOT WELCOME HERE” and (2) “CONGRATULATIONS BIDEN FANS; WELCOME SOCIALISM”. I was happy to stay in the RoadHouse; I figured they could smell a moderate liberal even from within the confines of the RoadHouse! I have empathy even more for Liz Cheney. That’s saying something.

Needs no comment. Very VERY cranky.

We could appreciate all the little yellow wildflowers as we passed by. In the photo, not so much.

We kept chasing the snow-capped peaks in the distance. Dan and I had a discussion because I was using GoogleMaps “wrong” and taking us the shortest route, but he didn’t want the shortest, he wanted the one with less steep ups and downs. It occurred to me that the time to tell me that is before I map things out. Folks, it’s 22 days. There are bound to be some, er, “discussions”. 

Tomorrow: we attempt to find something to do in the Ten Sleep vicinity. Normally, we’d hike but, 103F is less than appealing. (At this point, do I really want to carry 2 gallons of water with me on a trail?)