2007 05 Wyoming

2007 06 01 Hyattville to Gillette

This was another driving day. From Hyattville on US16 over the Powder River Pass and into Buffalo. From there, I took US16 on a loop north, east, and then south into Gillette, rather than simply taking I90. The drive over the pass is beautiful, and it was cold enough that it had snowed more than 3" over quite a bit of the summit. The road had been plowed.

Just north of Buffalo is the Ucross Foundation, a very interesting site I knew nothing about. This is still a working ranch.

The drive up to the summit from the west is in the Ten Sleep Canyon. The Powder River Pass is at over 9600 feet.

Fresh snow on May 31, and snow fences.

There are a lot of these flowers on the east side of the pass. The sign is in Buffalo.

There is a small "town", Arvada, south of 14/16 north of Buffalo. In that town was parked an absolutely enormous piece of railroad maintenance equipment.

Gillette is not a very touristy town, but is the home for several enormous open pit coal mines and a lot of oil and gas exploration. Campbell County is the largest coal producing county in the US, and the mines are in a strip that runs from about 20 miles north and east of town to about 50 miles south and east.