Open Skies and Rawlins, WY, Part I

Between the Lincoln Monument and Utah, there was a lot of open spaces and Rawlins, WY.

And don't forget a ton of cattle, even more than in Nebraska or Colorado:


And the Rocky Mountains:


And clouds:


Wyoming has strange PSAs against secondhand smoke:


And more wind turbines than anywhere we've ever seen. There was at least 100 in one patch alone.

However, even though Wyoming has a lot of wind power, they also have some crazy fossil fuel burning going on:

After awhile we reached Rawlins, WY. A small city where there is cheap gas, buffalo burgers, and a state penitentiary.

Before checking out the jail and getting gas, we got lunch at a local diner called Sharp Shooters, where the hostess is a Rawlins native. And this diner was adorable and fit for any old time cowboy or cowgirl. They had a buffalo head on the wall:

A carved wooden cowboy and the diner rules. Wyoming actually doesn't have a Clean Air Act, so they have both a smoking and non-smoking section. Old school.



The salad buffet is a cover wagon!


And the most adorable bathroom room signage ever:

Their barbecue, buffalo burgers, and coleslaw, also were pretty darn good.

Wyoming, Home of the Smallest Town in America

We spent most of Wednesday driving through Wyoming, where there a lot of cows and a few cowboys. Neither Web nor I recall there being a welcome sign when entering Wyoming... unless it was this giant metal buffalo sculpture... a seemingly more fit welcome to Wyoming... since I don't think they want people moving in.


Aside from bovine species, you can find oil in Wyoming:


Wyoming, unlike many of the state we traveled through, had many things to stop and see. The first was the smallest town in America:


This is me, in front of the only house belonging to the only woman in Buford, modeling my new hat:


Aside from the house, there was a gas station and convenience store. The resident of Buford was kind of cranky. I guess I'd be cranky too if I lived in Buford alone.

Into Wild Nebraska

But the real reason why Nebraska was way cooler than Iowa, was its preservation of natural Nebraska wildlife at the Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park & Wildlife Safari. Web and I drove through the park in the Kia and got up and CLOSE with a variety of animals from the Great Plains.

We first met some Nebraskan elk. These guys really couldn't have given two shits about us driving through their territory and talking pictures of them:


We also met the whitetail deer, which were watching us more intently than us watching them. Just some deer chillin':


We then got acquainted with some of Nebraska's avian critters...

Like an owl:

A sandhill crane, that got up in our business:

And swans doing something strange...

The bear and wolf cages ended up being mildly disappointing. One, they are in cages so you can't just drive among man-eating predators. Two, there were no bears in sight. Three, the bears were quite possibly just mislabeled... or eaten...

In the last animal pen we observed a herd of bison. Despite being 6 feet tall and could easy kill us, they were mellow and didn't even look up from grazing as we passed. The white bison to the right is named Dakota, and she has a little mixed baby!

The other animal in the last pen was the pronghorn antelope. And man were they really friendly. Here is one male, not too interested in us but close to the road:

And here is a female that actually followed us a little bit:

But the last, youngest pronghorn, was in love with the Sportage:

He also was very interested in Web:

Nebraska, we learned, is not just home to corn, in fact we saw little corn. In fact, Nebraska is the home to friendly animals and invisible bears.