To Lander

Yesterday, we thought briefly of going for a hike this morning.  That didn't last long.  Our drive today was a little long than I had originally thought it would be, so we wanted to head out on the early side.  In the end Katie's aunt took us out to breakfast at a pancake house (not IHOP - thankfully).  I had very filling delicious crepes (the plan being they would last me through lunch).  Finally, it was time to be on the road again.

Nothing major for the trip - mostly just driving.  But when we passed into Wyoming today the views became epic.  Although I might get in trouble for saying it - more epic than Boulder.  Huge, open fields with nothing in them then abrupt mountains and cliffs; long, straight roads cutting through the rocks, exposing the various layers; lone groups of cows; clouds pouring over the mountain tops.  Epic.

As we moved further north and higher in elevation I got a pleasant surprise - it started to snow.  It was really interesting, starting from the bottom of the hill we'd have rain, then it would switch to questionable precipitation, then we'd have small snow flakes, and then larger ones.  The whole thing would reverse coming back down the hill.  But each trip up and down would bring us a little higher in elevation until we reached our end destination - Lander, WY.  Elevation: 5355 ft (just for reference Vienna, VA has an elevation of 430 ft).  Katie and I are feeling a bit of elevation sickness (headaches and slight dizziness), but it hasn't been too bad.

A farm house along the way

It's snowing here in Lander - gorgeous big flakes that look wonderful (leading me to take a bunch of photos even though I know photos of snow always look odd).  Our hotel is very pretty with wooden planks all along the outside, a slanted roof (now snow covered), and a fireplace in the lobby.  

Our cute hotel

As much as I love snow, it meant we needed to look at the weather and make sure we'd be able to drive tomorrow.  We checked out weather.com and talked to the helpful lady at the front desk and found... we wouldn't be able to go to Yellowstone.  Very very sad.  We'd be planning to see the park for a while and we'd heard wonderful things about it.  But safety first - Yellowstone was calling for 8-10 inches of snow, one of the passes had already been close, and Cloud is not built for snow.  Depressing, but there you have it.


Katie and I did some more free flow living and changed our plans.  Now we're going to Teton Park which is much closer to Lander than Yellowstone.  We went back through the calendar updating it with the new plans. The good news is we found we can go to Las Vegas and through Death Valley (we think...).  When I originally planned the trip I tried to give us short days because I wasn't sure how long we could drive for.  But since thing we've been doing fairly long days and managing quite well.  So with the improved information we decided we could squish in Vegas.  Hopefully...  We're quite proud of ourselves for being as flexible as we are.  Go team!

Day's Map