Day 1291

We woke up about 7.  We took our time this morning getting ready to leave.  I also took the time to check the lug nuts and grease one of the wheels.  We finally got going at 8:30.

The first 70 or so miles were uneventful.  Then the EGT's started to go up for no discernable reason.  Finally Ellen looked on the web and found out that we were bucking a 20 mile an hour headwind.  There wasn't any vegetation that was flexible to indicate this.  As we were continually gaining altitude I had to watch the EGT's like a hawk.

This lasted until our first fuel stop at 140 miles.  We still got 10 MPG.  Fortunately it died a little after that as we drove another 70 miles on I90 and fueled again up when we turned off.  We needed to because we were headed into a desolate area.

The road took us over the Big Horn mountains.  We started at 4200 ft, went up to 9600 feet, and back down to 4300 ft.  Going up was nasty.  Sort of like going up emigrant hill, except it was twice as high and much longer.  At times I couldn't go any faster than 40 without getting the EGT's too high.  The area above 8,000 ft was covered with snow.  Fortunately there wasn't any on the road.

Going down the other side was worse.  It was 16 miles of 6% downgrade.  Tow haul was only a little help and my brakes were going away halfway down the hill.  To make it worse, there were two tight 25 mph 180's.  I stopped before the second and let the brakes cool.  Then I did the rest of the 7 miles down in manual shift mode with the 4-way flashers on.

All in all it was the the nastiest, or next to nastiest drive I've ever made with the trailer.  Fortunately the last 50 miles or so were more or less normal secondary road driving.

Thermopolis is a neat little town.  We got there at 2:45.  The sign on the door said they opened at 3:15.  So we decided to pick out a space and setup.  By the time that was done and the pets were fed the office was open and we paid.  Then it was off to see the town.

We drove through the town.  It's kind of cool, and of course totally oriented to tourism.  A lot of it is based on the hot springs.  We went to the hot springs state park.  We walked around the whole park and looked in two of the bath houses just to see what they were like.  There are some amazing formations built up by the water from the springs.  We should have taken Lucy.

We ate dinner at a little hamburger joint.  It was good.  The evening was spent watching TV.  It's a small park, but the signal here is better than most parks we've been in.  The internet is really good, too.