Holiday Inn Express Suites Douglas

... to his small business in the small and flat broke town of wall, Ted Hustead and his wife give free ice water to travelers on the 16A to attract them to their store. It all started with these signs that said: "Get a soda…Get root beer… turn the next corner…just as near…to highway 16 and 14…free ice water…Wall Drug.“ Before they knew it they had people lined out there door. The signs had worked! Today Wall Drug is ...

... is awesome. The wildlife is spectacular and the hillsides are beautiful. Wyoming is big, expansive land with few people. Where we thought we'd stop for food or socialization there was no one....for approx 6-8 hours, just antelope and hay/straw. The hills are everywhere but not many trees. Once we got to Western Wyoming we saw red rock and that makes the hill so pretty, like the Grand Canyon.

Along the way from Douglas to Dubois ...

We hit the road with no set agenda. Our destination was Yellowstone but we knew it was a really long drive. When planning the trip we hadn't been able to find a suitable stopover point so we were playing it by ear. It was quite a nice feeling just to be driving and see where we turned up.

Wyoming was wide open plains with ...

... an Open House in which there were Pony Express re-enactors, horse drill team, an American Indian ethnographer Michael BadHand Terry (who was hilarious in showing us how to shoot from a horse and has a great web site http://www.warriorsplus.com/index.htm), bakers, etc.

After a fantastic dinner in Glenrock at the 1916-era Hotel Higgins with its restaurant The Paisley Shawl, we closed our day with some nice fireworks over Casper, visible from our hotel.

No rain today!

... as well as admire it (and the rushing creek that runs through it) from below. Our lunch was accompanied by torrential rain, but our picnic shelter did its job!

We ended our day in Douglas, home to the Jackalope. It’s also home to a WWII POW camp (Italians first, then Germans) that has one building remaining, and a Pioneer Museum that included some of the most ...

The morning was very stressful leaving Janelle and Michael's. The movers showed up at 7:30am and we were still cleaning things out of the RV, and it still smelled horrible from "the melon incident". With hugs and tears, I said goodbye to Janelle and we hit the road to visit my friend Jeanne in Parker, CO before heading north to Wyoming. I called Jeanne about a mile from her house and we arranged for me to drop off Bret and the kids at a park ...

... car very slowly over the unpaved road to the end of the roadworks then go on your way while the pilot car guides the waiting highway traffic, coming the other way, back. We pulled off the interstate at Douglas to get some food, it was quite late (about 5pm) and we were starving and quite a way off from Denver (about 230 miles). We pulled up at KFC but faced with the same menu neither of us could face ...

I drove a short distance from the campground found a spot to do a painting. It was of the Fronot Range in the distance and the edge of the cliff I was on. It looks rather dark and drab, but that is what the day was like. Compleatly overcast and times when you could see rain falling in the distance. It was 16x22 and I spent a good part of the day doing ...

... has fixed up the old fort quite nicely. The little cottages where the officers lived were nicely painted and looked quite picturesque. They all fronted on a beautiful parade gorund that had nicely cropped richly green grass. It might have been rather pleasant ot live here, except for that indian trouble. But then you look at the pictures. No paint on the ramshackle old shacks. The parade ground was either dirt dust or ...