Day 3--Ride 'em Cowboys!

Today we started our day in Kearney, NE and headed west yet again toward Wyoming. Once you get into Wyoming the landscape begins to change drastically. It’s hard to describe and photos don’t do it justice either. The sky is so blue, the clouds so white and the sky is so big you feel like you can see for miles and miles. We got our first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains complete with snow-capped peaks.

We stopped for a quick break at a rest stop near Sidney, NE where we thought we had a rattlesnake cornered, but it turned out that it was a non-venomous bull snake. Still pretty cool though.

We stopped for a break in Lander, WY and made sure to get a picture of Steph and the statue saluting all the women that worked so hard farming on the frontier.

We crossed over the Wind River several times during the last miles of the trip and got to see it pretty closely at our hotel. They had record amounts of snow out here this year so the river is up quite a bit and running fast. Our hotel for the night was actually right on the river so it was good to be able to see that.

As we were pulling into our stop for the night at the Wind River Motel in Dubois, WY we saw a sign for a rodeo that was happening tonight so we decided to change clothes, grab some dinner and head over to check out an authentic Wyoming Rodeo. The place was packed. It seems that everyone in an around Dubois comes to the rodeo on Friday night. There were also a lot of people there that are vacationing on dude ranches in the area. They dressed like cowboys and cowgirls, but their boots and clothes were a little too clean and shiny to have been used for serious work on the range.

It was fun watching the rodeo. There were kids under 5 years old riding horses like crazy and participating in things that would be considered borderline child abuse back home. Mutton busting would be one of the examples. They put a small child on a sheep and have the kid try to ride the sheep as long as they can. I saw a lot of little kids come up crying, but they kept coming back for more. It was my first rodeo and I think I’ll have a hard time going to another one now that I’ve seen a pretty authentic western rodeo. I even had some authentic western bbq brisket. It was really good. It was pretty cold out there. Hopefully we’ll be prepared for Yellowstone camping nights.

Tomorrow we head into Yellowstone fr 4 days and there is no internet access in the park so I won’t be able to post anything for a while. Stay tuned! More to come. Tomorrow is Grand Teton and Yellowstone!

Andy & Kate