The Great Road Trip of 2017.....Part Twenty Three/Day Eighteen

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nine of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Ten of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eleven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twelve of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Thirteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  

Part Fourteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  

Part Fifteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Sixteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Seventeen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 

Part Eighteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Nineteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 

Part Twenty of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Twenty One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Twenty Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

We waved goodbye to the bison herd and the Hot Springs in Thermopolis, Wyoming, heading east on Route 16.

We went through Worland, WY, in Washakie County, where they had a Museum and this big Mastadon replica out front.  Now that's an attention getter. lol

Then it was further east to Ten Sleep.  This town got it's name from Native Americans as it denoted the time it would take you to get from here to other significant towns......10 sleeps or 10 days.

And no, I didn't venture into "Dirty Sally's General Store" either.  They also have a Facebook page HERE.

More sights in Ten Sleep along the highway.....

Then it was further east on Route 16 toward Buffalo, WY.

You will pass through three exposed geological periods of rock formations on this stretch of Route 16.  The first third you'll pass by forests, snowcapped peaks and tundra hills.

Patches of snow on the mountains in the distance........

A familiar sight in these parts....full logging trucks.

Then once you pass by Keyhole Reservoir the scenery changes dramatically.

The last two thirds of the roadway to where it joins I-90E, the topography changes to steep canyon walls with hair pin curves and steep inclines and descents.  I'm no geologist but this piece of the road is a rock lovers wet dream. ;-)

There were road signs every now and again letting you know what layers of the earth you were passing by that were exposed.  Here's Granite Gneiss which is the Pre-Cambrian era and these exposed rock formations are 3 Thousand Years old.

 

I'd hate to be pulling a huge ass RV on this roadway!  I'm sure many an RVer's brakes have  burnt out on this stretch of road.

                  

The roadway steepness leveled off eventually and then we hit Buffalo, Wyoming.

We stopped into Bozeman Trail Steakhouse for a late lunch/early dinner steak dinner.....

Some city slicker from out East probably gets a big surprise if they order the Rocky Mountain "Oysters". hehehe

Though a fitting name(shut up Kim!), I did NOT get the "Crazy Woman Prime Rib"......if I want Cajun anything I can get the authentic "blow the top of your head off" right here. hehe

I wondered if this place ever heard of a side that was NOT Potato!  Oh wait there is applesauce. lol

Lots of taxidermy to keep you entertained on the walls.....

We never made it to the Wyoming Whiskey Distillery but we found it on a liquor store's shelves and on a sign in the bar here.

More dead animal heads and a miniature Conestoga Wagon......

My steak dinner with a sad piece of greenery on the plate.  I did have a salad beforehand and the meat was quite good.

Hubs prime rib meal.  Of course there were potatoes of some ilk on another plate since the "Texas Toast" took up the leftover room on that plate.

Being watched by a bison as I ate.....

Me and the out of focus elk on the wall...

A map of Stagecoach routes across Wyoming from back in the day....

Look!  It's Pumba's relative......or is it a distant cousin, the Wild Boar?

And our first sighting of a Wall Drug sign........

Unfortunately it's never tomorrow.......

And this area is lousy with Rodeos in the Summer it seems.  Another one we missed seeing.....

Rustic Western swing outside the restaurant, complete with wagon wheels.....

A plaque about the Big Horn Mountains.......

A huge "Weather Rock".....lol

And then it was onto I-90 heading East(I think)but definitely out of Thermopolis and Buffalo, WY.

Sluggy

Great Road Trip of 2017.....Part Six/Day Five

**I'll be out of commission for a couple of days but should be back up and running by Friday(medical stuff).  I had this post ready in the chute so enjoy. 8-)

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

So we veered North ........

And the topography took on a decidedly different turn.

After a while we came to town........

                               

The site of "Carhenge"!

                    

I apologize for the sound quality but it was quite gusty that day.

                                 

This America's answer to Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England is mathematically/geometrically the same as the famous antiquity in the United Kingdom.

                                         

The man who decided to build this used junked American built cars instead.  American Druids come here to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes.

                                        

And unlike the one in England, it's not cordoned off so you can't get close to it, you can wander all around and through the grounds to your heart's content.

They also had other quirky art installations made from metal.  Like this fish.

                                        

We didn't get close enough to these art pieces to figure out what they were.  Remember it was blazing hot out that Summer!

                                       

This was cool.  In their small gift and snack shop they had a wall with every state's license plate on it.

The lady manning the shop said Alliance NE was dead center in the path of the Solar Eclipse that blanketed North America that Summer.  We were also traveling westward that Summer and just a week or so ahead of it's arrival in most every place we stopped.  The site was expecting about 15,000 people camping in the fields surrounding Carhenge on the date of that Solar Eclipse.  Not liking crowds I was glad to get a t-shirt and move on NOW! lol

Oh look!  A sign for another Runza restaurant. lol

A  sign for Buffalo Bill's Ranch.  We didn't have time to stop there in North Platte, Nebraska but you can read about it HERE.

OMG!  How did we get this close to Hershey?!  Oh wait, this one isn't in PA. ;-)

We stopped for the night at a little hole-in-the-wall motor inn called the Meadowlark Motor Inn outside of Bridgeport, Nebraska.  Nothing fancy but they had a restaurant and a liquor store attached to it. lol

 

Home Sweet Home for one night.   You know you are in a part of the country where they get a lot of snow when your room has both an outside facing door(shown here)plus a backdoor in the room facing an interior corridor that feeds out to a central entrance/exit.

              

                                 

Hubs went into the liquor store(that's where you checked in)and found a great deal on a bottle of bourbon or whiskey or something of that ilk.

We also got a discount coupon for breakfast the next morning.  The clerk there also told us that if we lost our room key(??)after the store and restaurant closed up for the night there would be no one to let us back in our room.  So once we had dinner we stayed in the room.

It was by no means a 3 star motor inn(do they even give stars for motor inns?)but it was roomy by modern motel standards, had a bathroom, a bed and a tv.  What more could you ask for?  

Thus ended Day Five of the Journey Across the Country.

Sluggy