well now.
this is the last state where i took a crapload of pictures.
if you haven't guessed it, it's Wyoming.
also a land of cool, unexpected shit. although i guess most people know about yellowstone.
but we'll get to that later.

first up.
anyone ever see "close encounters of the third kind"?
a mashed potato pilin' richard dreyfus was making an effigy to this national monument:
devil's tower.
the thing stands alone in NE Wyoming, probably a reminant of some ancient volcano, leaving nothing in millions of years past but its hardened core. the native americans of that area said that the tower was created when seven kids were trapped by a giant bear. they prayed to the gods to save them. their prayers were answered: the gods raised the earth above them and shot the kids up past the bears reach. apparently they shot up so far that the kids ended up turning into a stellar body. you know that one: the pleides cluster, subaru, the seven sisters, whatever you wanna call it. in the constellation of taurus.
the bear scratched the shit out of the raised earth, however, which gives it the form that we see today.
the other draw to this area are the prarie dogs. not too sure if you can see any in this picture, but all those dark spots in the ground are prarie dog holes.
i once heard that these guys have the most extensive underground system of any animal. can't quite remember the numbers to actually make it sound incredible. but i'm sure in was on the order of many acres, if not hundreds of acres.

next destination: yellowstone.
but we saw some interesting wildlife on the way.
first there was this big male moose. that thing next to it does look like a bear, but it was in fact only a cow. this was as close as i got to it. eventually it got pissed, made some godawful noise, and ran off with other meese that were hiding behind those trees to the left.

next was some deer. a doe and her fawn. we stopped, took pictures and eventually they hopped that barbed wire fence in the back. well, the mom totally cleared it, but the kid was a pussy and had to weasel its way through it.

next thing to cause us to slow to a stop was this cow. in the back country of Wyoming, these cow are free-range. this one happened to get on the wrong side of the guard rail. i wonder how long he'll last. luckily not too many cars frequent this area.

from here on, the scenery got interesting. the roads led us through small canyon. with a bit of that carved look to it. next came some reminents of what looked like the badlands, but they were not.
some clouds came from out of nowhere and screened the sun. when we passed through those planes we came to a larger canyon. the highway parallels the railroad. you can see the tunnels there to the right.

just now getting into the rockies, the sunset makes some interesting colors.
there's so many more sunset pictures to go, i think i'll wait til i post next time.
enjoy that one you got there for now though.