LANDER, WY

The town of Lander is at the base of the Wind River Mountains, 5,357’ above sea level.  The days here are usually warm and the nights cool.  In the afternoon the wind usually picks up and blows extremely hard.  There are soooooooo many grasshoppers here, it is like a plague!  They just don’t know what to do to get rid of them.  The Loop Road was our destination today. It is a sixty mile round trip where we saw mountains, canyons, historical attractions and many beautiful sites.

Our first stop was the visitor center at Sinks Canyon State Park.  The park features a geologic phenomenon in which the Popo Agie River (pronounced po-po-scha) vanishes into a large carvern, the Sinks only to reappear in a rainbow and brown trout-filled pool, the Rise, about one-half mile down in the canyon.  It was amazing to see.  The trout arrived naturally and stay because it is a protected area.  No fishing is allowed, but you can purchase fish food and feed them as we were doing.

Two more ‘ghost’ towns (both were gold mining towns) were on the agenda! South Pass was the first, which looked to us like the original buildings were left in place.  The town experienced its gold rush after the bulk of westward emigration had taken place.

Atlantic City was the next ghost town we visited, and it looked like there were many more new buildings than old and it was much more commercialized.

The next part of our excursion was driving through Red Canyon, which was probably the highlight today.  It was a deeply rutted, dirt road, probably used mainly for the ranchers in the area and four-wheelers.  Most of the drive was with the mountains on our right and green, green pasture and sagebrush on our left. It was an amazing ride.

Last on today’s agenda was Mike’s trained cow.  We stopped beside a cow resting by the side of the road (this is open range country) and Mike did his best cow imitation – believe it or not, the cow stood up and started mooing at Mike.