Saturday: Black Hills to Cody, WY

Saturdays' goal was to travel from the Black Hills area to Cody Wyoming. We got a bit of a late start because we didn't get settled in on time Friday night. We didn't think that would be a big problem because the total number of miles we needed to drive wasn't all that high. We knew that some of the roads would require some slower speeds, but we completely underestimated the total time needed. We made a stop at Jewel Cave in the hopes of taking a basic cave tour, but we got there a bit too late and all the morning tours were sold out. It ended up being a good thing as we needed all the time we had to make it to Cody before night fall. Most of the day went pretty smoothly, but after we left Highway 90 and got on Highway 14 things changed quickly. We found ourselves climbing up a mountain pass that was higher that what I expected to see this far away from the Rocky Mountains. Our GPS recorded an elevation of over 8400 feet and on the uphill side we were driving through some nasty fog:


After we crested the peak and started heading down the other side we found a visitors center that still had snow laying around. The girls were less than thrilled with it.

The downhill run was very scenic and we even found some wildlife that was willing to pose for the camera.

Katie and Julie are still figuring out how to keep their ears from plugging up while changing elevations so rapidly, but they are getting better at it. The girls still aren't completely excited about driving so much. They'd rather be swimming at the hotel swimming pools, but we're working on that...

After we cleared the pass, the land flattened out again and we saw a type of landscape that isn't common to Michigan:


We also found out that it is common to see very long trains transporting coal out here. I wasn't able to get any good shots of these trains, but we saw several that were very, very long.

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