Dave's PhotoJournal for June 6th

Leave Boulder, MT, 8:30 AM.
Trip: 921.4 Odometer: 47,987

Arrive parents' house, Colorado Springs, CO, 11:15 PM. trip: Approx. 780 odo: approx 48,845.

The original plan, when leaving Seattle, was to take Highway 89 south from Livingston, MT, through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The amended plan as of last night was to decide whether to follow that route or not based on the weather.

When I woke up this morning, the fierce winds of the night before had brought in some fairly uniform low-lying clouds, and scattered rain showers. (Or, in some instances, scattered torrential downpours.) So, after consulting with the owners of the RV park, and an information center employee in Bozeman, and deciding that the weather most likely would not be clearing for at least a couple days, I decided to instead follow I-90 east/southeast into Wyoming, then catch I-25 from it's beginning all the way south along the front range to Colorado Springs.

So, I took Highway 69 south from Boulder to I-90, and did just that. Took a slight side trip to see what "Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park" was all about, but the visitors center was closed, and while they were running tours, they were 2 hour tours, not leaving for another hour and a half, and I didn't want to use that much time, since I wanted to get to my parents' house by tonight.

Drove about 800-900 miles today, so nothing too interesting to talk about, except that I got a speeding ticket (87 in a 75) in the middle of Wyoming. Oops.

Actually, there are two more things of note. When I was driving through Denver, soon after dark had fallen, it was hard rain the whole time. Of course, they don't use any reflectors to mark the lanes, only paint, which was invisible due to the rain. Plus, they are doing construction the whole way through the city, complete with lanes randomly being shifted left and right and everything else. So, that was some of the most stressful driving I think I've ever done in my life.

When I got to the Springs, my parents weren't home yet, so I headed to Old Chicago to have a beer, since last time I visited I had heard that a lot of alumni from my high school hang out there, so I wanted to see if I would run into anybody. I didn't, and I returned home an hour later, and stayed up for several hours talking with my parents.

View from the RV park overlooking Boulder, complete with low lying clouds.

More of the view from the RV park.

Landscape along state highway 69, which leaves I-15 at Boulder, heads southeast, and meets up with I-90 at Whitehall.

More of highway 69.

I thought it would be nice to get a typical "farm house in front of the hills" picture. But it was difficult at 70 mph.

Mountain and sticky clouds along the highway.

So I drove by this cow that was just sort of standing there on the side of the road, on the OUTSIDE of the barbed wire fences that are supposed to keep the cows off the road. I figured having a picture of me with my arm around a cow would be a great souvenir of the road trip, so I decided to go back and try to get one. Unfortunately, after I parked and started walking close to the cow, she got scared and started moving away. This was as close as I got. So, after I gave up, the cow kept walking, and eventually came to a stop RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY. NOT MOVING AT ALL. "Oh, geez, this could be bad when the next pickup truck comes around that bend at 80 mph" I said to myself. Fortunately, the cow decided she wanted to stand on softer ground, so she only stood there for a minute or two, then she resumed her previous activity of standing quietly next to the road, rather than on it.

Shortly after rejoining I-90, there was a sign pointing to Lewis And Clark Caverns State Park. I decided to check it out, since it was only a little ways off the highway. I was hoping it was something I could jump out of the car, look at and say "ooooh. aaaaah.", and get going again. These hills were on the way there. They were interesting because they were perfectly flat layers, that sometime just got pushed up at an angle. Cool.

Along a pullout on the road to the state park. A cavern. Top left.

More cool rocks.

Sign at the entrance to the state park.

Turns out the visitors center was closed. They had 2 hour walking tours, but they met 3 miles up the road, and the next one wasn't leaving for an hour and a half, and I didn't want to sink 3 and a half more hours into this, since I had a LOT of driving left to do today, so I headed on my way.

Wow. 1000 miles on the road trip. How extraordinary.

Since it was pretty cold, the snow level was pretty low last night and into this morning. So, going over this pass, which I believe was somewhere shortly before Bozeman, they had gotten a little bit of snow. (I heard also that it had been snowing in West Yellowstone overnight and into the morning). One more reason that I decided to take the longer-yet-faster route down to Colorado Springs.

More snow on the surrounding hills.

A big, isolated bluff that I thought might have been the one I saw from the plane on the way to Chicago on December 21st, but I don't think it was.

Large snow covered peaks, peeking through the clouds, a ways past Bozeman. I passed a sign at somepoint identifying the one in front as Crazy Peak.

Crazy Mountains seen from somewhat further along I-90.

Pulled off the road at one point onto a side road, where I found a nice spot to really study the map to find that these were, in fact, the Crazy Range. From I-90, in the last two pictures, we were looking at the south end of the range, but from here, we are looking at them from the east, so we can see that they are, in fact, a whole range, going from south to north.

Zoomed in on the southern portion of the range.

The northern portion of the range.

Across the border into Wyoming on I-90. The first 20 or 30 miles of the highway in Wyoming were really reddish. So was the soil, in the spots you could see sticking out of the hillsides.

More northern Wyoming.

Stopped at a scenic viewpoint in northern Wyoming, near Sheridan, which I imagine was intented to look out over several high peaks in the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, but again I was foiled by the low-lying clouds.

Some of the hills surrounding me at the scenic viewpoint.

Typical northern Wyoming scenery. Further to the south, it got dryer.

Getting close to the northern terminus of Interstate 25. This was an exciting moment for me. If you didn't spend your entire young life considering Interstate 25 as "THE" interstate, you probably wouldn't understand.

Getting closer...

The exit for I-25. Oh, how joyous.

This was an attempt to take a picture of the beginning of I-25. I really don't know what happened here.

There. Much better. This is about 1/4 mile in to I-25.

For most of the trip I had my cruise control sitting at 8-9 mph over the speed limit. Most cops won't pull you over for that, because they're waiting for the bigger fish. Well, at one point I was daydreaming, and allowed myself to go a little faster for a little while. Lo and behold, I became a bigger fish. This is the view from the car while I was waiting for the cop to write up my ticket.

Me, thrilled at getting a ticket.

The cop that got me.

My Wyoming speeding ticket. 87 in a 75.

Somewhat funky clouds, north of Denver in Colorado.

Back Up Next