Wyoming to Nebraska

Turtle Rock in Medicine Bow, WY

More natural rock stacking

 

I was feeling a little annoyed with Wyoming yesterday. . .after our night in Rock Springs, full of concrete and dog unfriendliness. Folks without masks. Blahblah. However, today we got to hike in one of our favorite western parks. . . Medicine Bow, in Eastern Wyoming. We have wonderful memories of this National Forest. . . John and I and various dogs, and my oldest daughter and I when we drove cross country with our dogs. Austin and Boise to Catawba, Ohio. Nature has stacked rocks in the most interesting formations,  the most famous being Turtle Rock.    

It is also a place with lots of aspen trees, which inspired me to plant them in my last two properties in Boise. Theaspens in Medicine Bow are just starting to turn bright yellow now. The Turtle Rock hike was a longer hike than John or I remembered, and while starting out cool, the sun was super hot by the time we finished at about 1:30p. And the Park service had turned off all of the water in the park. We survived. We just had to wait to get water at the next rest stop.

We made our way to North Platt, Nebraska where we're spending the night tonight. We've stayed at this LaQuinta before. It has a defunct golf course next door (maintained for a decent short dog walk) and a very decent picnic/dog park area on the grounds. We met a woman who has two Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers there, and that might be a breed I would consider. The woman we talked to trains them for agility,  and had just come back from a scent competition with them. Who knew? I did know that some dogs with great noses (most of them, I suppose) are trained to smell human urine, and can pick out the samples from cancer patients. This person today told us that they are also being used to diagnose COVID patients. Dogs. What did we ever do to deserve them?

 

and more. . .

 Tomorrow it's another day of Nebraska (we're told there is a great bakery in Lincoln), and a night in Iowa, outside of Iowa city.  Jasper continues to be the traveler extraordinaire, and we were better at traveling today than we were yesterday. Hopefully it will continue to be easier, as we catch up on more sleep. 

We are so looking forward to fall in New England. And only time will tell how we adapt to the New England winters!

And let me apologize for the disjointed nature of these posts. I am still trying to catch up on sleep. Perhaps tonight!

Aspen Forest in Medicine Bow WY