Passing the Day (day 10)

Today was a day that could have gone wrong in quite a few ways, but worked out pretty well in the end.

We left Custer State Park in the mist and rain, heading off to do 320 miles. Normally that wouldn’t take all that long. But driving on the windy, climbing roads around here slows our speed.

We eventually made it to Gillette Wyoming, the nearest “big” town on our route. The big draw for us: it had a Wal-Mart, so we could do some grocery shopping (like buying fruit and salad to counteract all of the ribs and pie). I also figured that they should have a little plug-in ceramic heater to make up for our inoperative furnace.

Seems they think it’s summer in Wyoming, despite it being 38 degrees and misty. Wal-Mart had rows of air conditioners, but no heaters. Oh well. Happily there was an Ace Hardware next door where we picked up this spiffy little number:



We almost ate at our first big fast food chain (I’m not counting Starbucks) today - but the line was too long. Good for us - we wound up at a local Mexican place, where the bill for the two of us was likely less than what we would have bought at Wendy’s. (Too bad the cute doughnut shop next door had just sold their last one when we got there.)

The temperature has been dropping during the day into the mid-30s. This was a worry, since we were finally going to climb into the Rockies. The “easiest” route involves climbing to 9666 feet through Powder River Pass, and then dropping back down to 4500 feet.

This had a few worries: the biggest was that the rain was turning to snow.



Even though the thermometer in the car read 28 degrees at one point, the road had been treated so there wasn’t ice. But even without the snow, this is a steep hill to climb with a trailer. I was waiting for our hard-used Odyssey to falter, but it pulled strong. I could maintain 45-50 all the way, only briefly dropping into 2nd gear. Coming back down the mountain, the brakes worked fine as did the transmission’s grade logic at slowing down the van. Surprisingly not bad at all.

This mountain climbing and descending sucked up a lot of time, a problem given that we had a bit of a deadline at the end of the day. Our destination, Thermopolis, has the “world’s largest mineral hot springs” and their public hot spring baths close at 5:30.




But it worked out: we got there at 5:05, and they only suggest you spend 20 minutes in the sulfurous hot water anyway. The public pool wasn’t anything special, but it was free, unlike the theme park-like places on either side of the state park property.

As we left the springs, Juliet picked up a booklet describing what was in this one horse town. Restaurants that are open on Sunday night aren’t among them. But we spotted a truck parked near the road with an Open sign in the window, selling a familiar food:



Being late in the day, they were out of a lot of stuff, but we picked up a beef BBQ sandwich and some ribs:



They were great - we ate dinner in the trailer of ribs, salad, and some of yesterday’s pie. Tonight’s campground, Eagle RV resort, isn’t fancy at all:


At least the bathrooms are very clean, they have wifi, we have a pull-through spot (we stayed hitched up tonight to the van, speeding our exit), and the staff was friendly. As if to show that that the day turned out pretty well after all, the sun came out briefly and a rainbow appeared.

Not too bad at all. Off to Grand Tetons (and likely less regular web access) tomorrow.