raise your hand if you love wyoming

we decided to see if we could get into devils tower even though it was after 9pm, and indeed we could! even though the west has its creepy ghost towns and deadly speed limits, they do have a great honor system. we were able to deposit the park fee and a camp site fee and set up amongst the few other campers. we decided to sleep in (8am!) and then got a start on hiking through the park.

i guess the lack of topography in these parks doesn't allow them endless trails, so we were able to hit all of them by 3pm. and what trails they were! not only did you get brilliant views of the tower all along them, but you got to experience all different landscapes and the wildlife that went along with them! like the PRARIE DOG TOWN in the meadows and the ANTELOPE through the fields. im gonna have to let the prarie dog pictures speak for themselves because i can't begin to describe how cute and snuggly and sometimes chubby they were. and they really bark! like dogs!

since we were able to see all the beauties of the park sooner than we expected, we decided to press on and see how much of the 9 hour trip to salt lake city we could get under our belts. we stopped in casper, wyoming to grab some eats at this authentic little mexicano joint and wow what goodness we got all for 13 bucks!

now we are on our way again -- we just went through a huge lightening storm and we saw a cow get sucked up in a tornado!!! ok no but thats what i thought was gonna happen. donald was being all storm chaser and i was being all like you is crazy ive seen the movie twister i know what im talking about when i say this is no good. well anyway it wasn't a big deal of a storm i guess but now we are driving through the darkest of dark. there hasn't been an exit in over an hour now -- if it wasn't as dark as jackrabbit scat i'd so be using my travelmate, but i'm afraid that will have to wait until tomorrow.

devil's tower from a distance

a bit closer. it was crazy how it was surrounded on one side was trees and on the other by fallen boulders.

some views of the surrounding areas from the trails

makes you wanna cry red white and blue tears

some of the mountains were so red. we painted donald's entire body in the dust. can you spot him in this picture?

another view from one of the trails

like OMG so cute. their little holes covered the plains - you couldn't walk anywhere with out one of them reaching up and gnawing and grabbing on to your shoes.

so gosh darn adorable don't ya know

we hiked up to this one ledge where we stopped for lunch. can you see how tiny i am?

this was the town of casper. someone complained to us about the town because of how much the cops SUCK - but um like cmon if you have those mountains in your backyard...just shut up.

wyoming is FILLED with awesomely named things. i also liked the dead horse creek.

kind of blurry picture, but just wanted to show the rain in the distance -- this was the storm that we survived.

and here was another one back from the badlands. i just loved how you were driving along through the plains and then bam these formations came out of nowhere

distance traveled: appx 1,996 miles

ps. sorry for all those who have been trying to call or have been expecting one - we haven't had signal for like a day and then our phones died! we should be recharging tonight.

pps. donald is a lamer explaner. mt rushmore was cool -- not only did you get a great shot up jefferson's nose, but we broke the law to get that hush hush shot of roosevelt smooching lincoln.