Cody to Buffalo and onward to Rapid City, South Dakota

26th July 2012 - Cody, Wyoming

We had just come out of the movies and a couple of deer darted in front of Butter, Robie's beetle. The baby deer managed to make it across but mama decided to pull back on to the roadside trembling...poor things. She made it across safely-phew!

Thunderstorm at Absaroka Rv Park - high density living at this park, short lots, $29/night,basic but good. Could do with better animal control though...quite a few yapping dogs.

28th July 2012 - Leaving Cody at 7.50am. Diesel in Cody was the most expensive we've come across so far at $3.919/gal. Tax on Diesel and Petrol is 14cts/gal, State Tax is 4%.

We overnighted in Buffalo after a 4 hour drive from Cody.

Left Buffalo at around 0815 and it was already 23deg C.

What a bountiful state Wyoming is - from Yellowstone National Park in the west to brick red mountains in the east.

One could almost be in the Kimberleys of Western Australia but we are not, we are travelling on US I-90  East, Wyoming.

We spotted these riders out on one of the ranches.

We are doing 68-70mph so I'm hanging out of the truck window like a dog but managed to get a pic of this derelict looking barn.

As I zoomed in, I saw some rams with big curly horns.

The scenery gets even more interesting as we enter the town of Ten Sleep-boy it was like a roller coaster ride.

We enter the Big Horn National Forest,Wyoming and are wowed by the monolithic proportions of the mountain sides.

We pass signs advising that the rocks are older than Methuselah. The ancient granite gneiss range from 750million years to 3 billions years old. Granite gneiss, with an age of approximately 2.5 billion years, in the Black Hills, South Dakota, provides a link between ancient rocks in western Wyoming and Montana and in eastern North and South Dakota and Minnesota. The discovery suggests that early Precambrian rocks covered an extensive area in northcentral United States and were not restricted to several small nuclei.

At the highest point we have ever been on a highway on this trip..we are constantly ascending and descending.

Not only did we descend from 9,666ft to 4,000 odd feet, 7% incline, there are plenty of sharp curves. The electric brakes on the truck are constantly kicking in, noise in the cabin is deafening and I am being jerked around like a dog on its first day at Puppy School!

Some parts of US I-90 looks like its got a  bad case of varicose veins. The roads here are subjected to extreme weather conditions; snow in winter, wet in spring and searing heat in summer - no wonder they are all cracked and patched up.