Where are we?

Within seconds of arriving in Wyoming, the mountains were covered in blankets of snow. Luckily we filled our tank right away.

We drove for miles and miles, hour after hour up through windy roads and high into the mountains above cloud level. There was a point where we started to feel vulnerable because it felt as if we would never get back down. Every 15 minutes we would pass a hunter in a truck, and it was just us in our little hyundai.

After 4 hours in the mountains we finally made it to Cody. We walked into this little motel and were greeted by a man wearing suspenders with a flanel shirt. He had a big curly white beard which covered his face and small spectacles. I was laughing inside, who else could this be but none other than Santa Claus! I desperately wanted to say something and I looked to Steve to see if he was thinking the same thing. In his very friendly Midwestern accent he welcomed us. When we left I asked Steve who he reminded him of and of course........

That night Santa suggested we go to Irma for dinner. Irma is a hotel and restaurant built by Buffalo Bill, world famous for creating his Wild West show in the late 1800's. We walked in and I had a flashback to that saloon from South Dakota. I got my wish, a real live saloon. The cash register had big rusty gold buttons, there were cowboys everywhere, and the hostess was wearing a floral vest. There were animals heads hanging from the walls, and the carpet reminded me of a casino carpet, lots of random patterns that you would never actually buy for your own house. The waitress came up to us after 10 minutes apologized and said something along these lines,

I'm so sorry, I was just in a conversation about what you call a castrated bull

So I asked what the answer was, why steer of course and we all just laughed. The food was really good and fresh, hard to find on a roadtrip. The Irma, a great authentic place.

The next morning we woke up early to bitterly cold weather. We headed west to Yellowstone. On the way it started snowing. As we got closer and closer to the park, the snow came down faster and thicker. The ranger told us we should be ok and to drive slowly. We were handed a panflet and inside a there was a big yellow leaflet that read "warning many visitors have been gored by buffalo". That instantly made me uneasy. There was even a picture of elk attacking cars. We certainly got the gist, stay far away from the animals!

Steve drove the whole way through. The road was very icy and some of the cliffs had no barriers so we we kept at 10 miles per hour at most. 1 hour into the park, it luckily stopped snowing. 2 hours into the drive we were eagerly waiting for old faithful to erupt. Though they give an approximate time, we stood and stared at it for a while. I didn't want to even turn away for a second in case I'd miss it. There is constant steam rising from the geyser and we saw the water boiling ready to burst. The minutes moved so slow, especially when it's so cold to be standing there.

Finally at 1230 it happened, the hot water shot up and everybody stood there in awe for under 2 minutes. Then everybody raced back to their cars to continue through the park. Sadly we didn't see any bears but we did see bison on the side of the park.

It took another 1.5 hours to leave the park, we certainly knew we wanted to be near civilization by nightfall. We drove into Jackson which was the prettiest part of Wyoming that we saw. Huge ski area and lots of people and nice lodges. We stopped at the visitor center and spoke to a local. He was telling us about his horses and how there was a family of foxes that lived at his house but who knew not to bother his animals and his family. He was also saying that the school in his area, town whatever you could call it, had 4 students. We drove through his town and there was barely any life there. This was how most of Wyoming was, a whole lotta nothing. I wondered where people buy groceries, or go to the doctor.

We drove as south as we could go towards Colorado. There's only so long you are comfortable being in the middle of nowhere wondering what you would do if your car broke down or you ran out of gas, Wyoming, the most different state I have ever been in, if only we were lucky enough to see a rodeo.