Hello Everyone

July 17th Happy Birthday to RON!!!!

We have made it to the 2 week mark of our trip and it’s hard to believe that much time has passed, it flew by! We have driven about 2800 miles since leaving Albany and have seen so many amazing places already! We are grateful to have this experience to see this land we call home and many of the wonders it holds...

Once we were in South Dakota and Wyoming as well we began to see signs on the highway that were a new experience for me.  On I 90 as well as the smaller highways there were spots where road closure alert signals were posted along at various intervals.  They were generally at an exit ramp and were designed to steer you off the highway in the event of severe weather.  They were reminiscent of the signals at railroad crossings. After having seen the effects first hand of flash flooding on the landscape I can imagine what winter storms would do to these roads.  They cross such open, expanses of land that storms of all types can simply barrel through without anything to stop them.  We learned from a TV special last month that North America has some of (or the) worst weather on Earth due to the open land nestled between major mountain ranges.  Once seeing it in person you can certainly understand the dynamics of such weather events.

As we were heading to our next destination we stopped at an area known as Hell’s Half Acre.  It is a deep Canyon with amazing views. It was only a short stop but meant to be because we found another bird to add to our life list; a sage sparrow.  ** Owl Creek MTS

We are now staying at the Boysen State Park, WY campground in the Wind River Range by the Boysen Reservoir which was also a recommendation from our new friend we made out here from Casper. What an incredible place. We are on a peninsular surrounding a reservoir.  The Reservoir and Park contains 15,145 acres of land and 19,560 acres of water.  There are 20 miles of shoreline and the widest point of the reservoir is 5.5 miles. The Big horn River begins from the release of this dam of the reservoir.  The river and surrounding Wind River Canyon is simply spectacular! heck of a view from our camper!

We spent the evening relaxing and going in the water to cool down (much better than putting an ice pack on my back :) from the intense heat (91).  However, outside of our camp we had great shade and cool breezes. We are what you call ‘dry camping‘  which means that we have no hookups for water or electricity.  Therefore we have to use the generator to charge our battery so that we can have electricity in the camper and we filled our tanks with water to provide us with our running water in the camper.  It’s pretty cool to be able to living like that in an area without services...

We have seen new birds all along this thrip and today we saw the Western and the Clarks Grebe out on the water.  Beautiful!

last evening in order to cool down before going to bed (you can’t use the AC with a generator we went for a dip in the water.  I have to say it was an incredible experience being in the water at 9:00 at night while the sunrise is giving you a spectacular show through the many cloud formations... All in all it was a fabulous way to spend Ron’s birthday.

All in all, this is such a privilege to be able to travel and see so many exciting, beautiful places this way.  I keep thinking how much I would love to to have Rob and Mike and their families sharing some of these things with us.  Hopefully, sometime in the future... Hey kids there are 2 bunks with your names on them :)

As I was filming the sunrise I noticed that my camera wasn’t working well and to appears it’ll have to be sent in for repair so no more pictures after today (unless from Ron’s Camera) until we get to Jackson Hole tomorrow & I try to get it fixed.

7/18/13  We woke early this AM at 5:30 to the sun rising and are heading out to see the sights this morning and go fishing...