We left Ten Sleep this morning, and already Yellowstone seems like an eternity ago - such is the speed with which this holiday is going! Yellowstone was wonderful - the Bighorn mountains were breathtaking!
First stop was two and a half hour's drive from Ten Sleep in the town of Gillette, Wyoming. The drive to Wyoming was incredible. In fact, the landscape changes every few hundred miles - amazing. The rock formations dated back 500 - 750 MYA, part of the Cambrian period. We reminded the kids of the trilobites we saw at the dinosaur museum - as this is the place they thrived. So exciting that they could put in all in context. Oliver kept wondering if we were still in a volcano and if we would see some trilobites. We didn't. However, we did see deer and bison and chipmonks!
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| Bighorn Mountain range |
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| Bighorn Mountain range and our trusty steed - 'Blossom' (affectionately named by Ken!) |
We had a 9am appointment with the coal mining tour bus. The kids (including my big kid!) loved the size of the vehicles, their tyres and their trays, and we were impressed with the size of the engineering and large scale operations. Our guide, an elementary school teacher, moonlights in the summer holiday as a guide for the mining tour. She is one steely woman (my vintage) who drove the behemoth trucks for the mining company and now does the PR for them. She was great with the kids, and very informative.
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| Inside the bucket |
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| priceless kids with $70,000 tyre |
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| Reversing up to dump load into crusher - Oliver and Benedict were VERY excited! |
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| black gold |
Next stop, Devil's Tower National Monument. It was incredible to think that 50 million years ago it was a magma plug in the sandstone, and now today, after eons of erosion we are left with the amazing rock. We spent time wandering around the Tower, and helping the children learn about the environment we were exploring - then filling in their Junior Ranger papers to receive another badge. We really live in an amazing, ever changing world! Very humbling.
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| Devil's Tower |
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| Glorious 30 degree day! |
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| We enjoyed walking around the base, a 1.2mile gentle hike - well, almost all of us, Benedict did a few 'stop and drops' "It's too hot! I'm thirsty! It's too far!" |
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| Entering South Dakota - Mt Rushmore territory. Our home is Custer National park campground (Oh, golly, I am actually camping!). |
