Road Trip - Casper

The next set of blog posts are written about three months after the fact. We took lots of notes (and photos) on things that we did each day, but kind of fell off the wagon in regard to actually publishing the stories.

This morning was our last in Yellowstone, and our last day camping for the next few weeks. As we were packing up camp a lady who had arrived the day before came over to compliment our rooftop tent. She mentioned that they visited the park every year, and that our site was probably their favourite of every campsite in every campground in Yellowstone! We let her know that we were leaving that morning which greatly excited her, and she asked if we'd be willing to meet her at the gatehouse and hand over the site to her. It wasn't going to cost us anything, so we said "Yeah, no worries!" Sure enough, as we drove past the ranger station, there she was waiting with the park host to secure her new spot.

We stopped at the Old Faithful Inn for petrol and coffee, and the moment we stepped inside I was totally blown away by the architecture. This is one of the last log hotels in the USA, and is built in a style known as National Park Service Rustic (or colloquially "Parkitecture"). The central feature of the Inn is an enormous stone fireplace which measures almost 5 square metres at the base. There's also a huge iron clock on the side of the chimney.

We were on our way to Casper, and had several route options to get there. There's the more direct route east, but we chose to go south via Grand Teton National Park. At a lookout point on the shores of Jackson Lake, we helped some tourists take photos with the magnificent mountains in the background.

We had another break in Colter Bay Village, still on the shore on Jackson Lake, and bought a pizza for lunch. We quickly discovered that the restaurant had Wi-Fi! All conversation stopped for ten minutes as both of us waded through a weeks worth of notifications, emails, and messages that all came flooding in. It had actually been quite freeing to be forcefully disconnected for so long, maybe we'll have to try it again some time!

Continuing on toward Casper, the road took us through some spectacular landscapes. We moved quickly from the forests of the National Parks into deserts, down into canyons, and across lakes and rivers. Similar to what we'd seen on our way to Yellowstone, the land switched dramatically from barren to intensely farmed and irrigated.

We arrived at our small-town destination about 8 hours after leaving Norris Campground. Dinner was at a well-reviewed gourmet burger restaurant, where I made the unfortunate choice of ordering an Asian inspired, exotic sounding burger. The burger was dry, with strange sweet-chili-esque sauce. Should have stuck to the basics! After dinner we retired to our room at the Quality Inn, taking care not to annoy any of the open-carrying locals in the parking lot.