Damn You, Wyoming

I’ve lived in Colorado all my life, and as a native Coloradoan, Wyoming is always the butt of every joke. You cross the border from northern Colorado into southern Wyoming and everything seems to instantly turn brown and yellow and flat.

The reality though, is Wyoming has lots of hidden secrets.

We left the Black Hills early in the morning, heading northwest. I figured the best part about the drive through Wyoming would be this…

As we approached Devil’s Tower though, rolling green hills and bright red rock actually made me stop to look out the window and admire. “This isn’t the Wyoming I had in mind…”

Devil’s Tower was a nice place to lunch and stretch our legs and we walked the trail around the monolith stopping to oogle at climbers scaling the columned face and biker personalities in turn. We had yet to escape the Sturgis rally.

After clambering back into the car, it was a long haul to our campsite for the night at Bighorn National Recreation Area. Mostly the landscape was what I’d expected from Wyoming – ranching, farming, followed by more ranching and farming. After we stopped for gas, Ryan and I switched places and he pulled out our “Scenic Drives” book to investigate a creative way to our campground. “16A, A stands for adventure” the book said about a little highway trickling west from I90. We pulled off the interstate and headed towards - I couldn’t believe it - mountains. As we drove this highway through some mountain range (we’re guessing the bighorn mountains?) we couldn’t believe where we were. “This looks more like New Zealand than the U.S.” said Ryan, and I just couldn’t grasp the fact that it was Wyoming. The highway snaked around the mountains in such a way that Colorado would be proud, and the ten percent grade coming down the other side of the pass was enough to make us have to stop and cool our brakes. All the while we were driving through Bighorn National Forest, which looked absolutely untouched and mostly healthy (compared to the beetle kill forests of Colorado and the Black Hills). Camping pullouts and fishing streams beckoned and Ryan and I found ourselves tempted almost to the point of abandoning our original plans and camping in the forest instead. Grassy tundra broke as we climbed the pass, green as could be and inviting us to explore.

If there was one state I didn’t think would make it on my bucket list to return to, it was Wyoming, and yet here I am, wishing I could explore that area tomorrow. Even after we dropped down the mountains back into farm country, we entered the climate for sunflower harvesting, and nothing makes me happier than a field full of sunflowers with their faces turned upwards to their namesake. And there was field after field after field. Damn you Wyoming.

If it wasn’t for the windstorm that did its best to devastate our tent in the middle of the night, I would never have thought we were in Wyoming at all. However now Wyoming’s got a new respect in my heart, and we hope to be back to explore the Bighorn National Forest and little highway 16A to the fullest sometime in the future.