On the road again....

We drove over 500 miles today, from Rocky Mountain to Grand Teton National Park, which is basically the entire state of Wyoming diagonally, plus a bit of northern Colorado.  Let’s be honest...  Joe drove over 500 miles, while I took pictures and admired the landscape.....  There was much to admire, and some not that pretty - but fascinating- areas.

The good news is that the speed limit on Wyoming highways is 80 miles/hour.  And no one stays at that speed....

(the number on the bottom is actual speed...  Joe was not fooling around!).  On undivided highways, the speed limit is 70 miles/hour, and even there, people go faster than the limit.

Still, that’s a long way to go, but this is a big country!  So, most of the pictures were taken from the car, going at over 80 miles/ hours, which explains the fuzziness....

We first needed to get out of the very rocky "rocky mountains ". So we went east for a bit, before heading north.  Some of the highways across the mountains are very impressive.









Then we headed north to the high prairies of Wyoming.  The region just south of Laramie (where many Western movies take place) is just beautiful.

And  indeed, driving by, we saw many impressive and expensive looking ranches (I think that's where Dick Cheney hangs out.... ). 

There are large cattle ranges, where the cows look very happy (which makes me happy too!).

There were wild horses and large flocks of prong horn antelope roaming around (you'll have to take my word on the horses, and I only have a couple of pictures of the antelops, because, as previously mentioned, we were driving at above 80 miles/hour).  I could not help but hum "home, home on the range" for most of the ride.....

We crossed the continental divide for the 6th or 7th time this trip (I've lost count..),

And drove 208 miles west on I80 (had we turned right at that junction, we could have driven all the way back home in 3 or 4 days.....).

I80 goes through the middle of nowhere.  Some of the areas, where oil is being drilled (or maybe fracked, it was unclear) are not very appealing (then again, if you are going to built a refinery, this is not a bad place to do it given that it's not that pretty to start with and no one lives there- of course, except for the people who work there....  must be tough....).

We were surprised by how busy I80 is in that area.  It was not congested, but there is are a lot  of big trucks.  I had not expected that.

There are also multiple "cow overpasses"  for the many herds that roam around the nicer areas.

We then turned North again, on US 191, driving along the Wind River Range, that had recently received the first snow of the season.

And, at last! we made it to Grand Teton National Park!  The weather is just beautiful and out first view of the Tetons was just awesome. 

The traffic through Jackson was much more busy than we expected (this being the off season) - there are still A LOT of tourists around here....  I guess we were not the only ones to think that September would be a nice time to enjoy the park...  You know you are in a touristy area prized by many cultures when the bathrooms have signs like this......

We were by then very tired, so will leave further exploring to tomorrow.  We are staying in the ski resort of Jackson Hole (Teton Village), which is very reminiscent of French ski resorts.

Indeed, our hotel has a definite French Alps look to it.

So, in part to reminisce about my childhood skiing in the Alps, in part because we were too lazy to move, we had (very good) fondue on the deck.