The Big West comes to Picture Day

Sorry, no links this weekend. Hectic time of year, you know - not enough time to cruise around the Internet to my satisfaction! Gordon and Roger have some, and Laura does them seemingly every day, so there you go. I'll be back with the links in the new year, as parents and sister and brother-in-law are visiting for Christmas and they will demand I interact with them as a real person. The nerve!

Moving on to the pictures: After we left Kansas behind, we reached Denver and wandered around Boulder for a while. It's a nice college town (or it was in 1993 - it could be a stinking pit of sewage these days) and we had a fun time. Then we headed north on Interstate 25 through the lowlands of the state. It's a lot like Kansas in eastern Colorado. Check it out:
 
 

Then we went into Wyoming, which has to be the least densely populated state in the lower 48 (Alaska might be further down on the list). It's a beautiful state, but I would go insane if I lived there, because I don't like rodeos. We drove through Cheyenne and Caspar and watched the gorgeous scenery. We stopped and took pictures, like this one of Krys in front of the big rock;
 
 
and this one, which is what much of Wyoming looks like:
 
 

We stayed the night in Kaycee, along I-25 and the Powder River. This was our weirdest night of the trip. We drove into town late in the afternoon (but not too late - maybe 5 o'clock) and were surprised to see nobody on the streets. Seriously. The town looked deserted. Then, down the street, we saw one person. He (or she - it was too far away to tell) was shoeing a horse. In the middle of the street. I love the West! The campsite was bizarre, too - it was nice enough, but with a lot of overgrown weeds, and it was next to an abandoned playground that was VERY overgrown - we kept expecting the Children of the Damned to start using it. As we hunkered down for the night, we realized where all the townspeople were. No they weren't vampires or zombies! The only place in town that exhibited any activity was the Hole-in-the-Wall Bar, from which loud music was pumping. I'm not kidding about the name, by the way. We didn't see anyone, but we assumed they were there. Maybe they were vampires, after all ...

We survived our night in Kaycee, as you probably guessed, and continued on our journey. We turned west and drove through towns with populations of, I shit you not, 12. We took more pictures:
 
 
This is western Wyoming. More rocks, more canyons - it's still pretty. I also took some pictures of the sky, because the sky in Wyoming is keen:
 
 

Finally, we reached Cody, which is a tourist trap. We didn't stay long in Cody, but we did check out the Buffalo Bill Reservoir and the dam. It's a dam - what more can I say? But it's in the middle of some spectacular scenery:
 
 
And check out the leg I'm flashing! Now that's hot stuff. I also got a shot up the ravine by the dam. Very nice:
 
 

So that's our first forays into the West. Nothing too amazing, I'll grant you, but it's a taste. Next week we head into Grand Teton National Park. Holy cow, what a beautiful place.