5-26-2021 - Wednesday
A drizzly morning today, pretty chilly. We had a hard time getting started -- we left the RV 3 times before we got out of the campground. We decided to switch the GPS in the Jeep with the one in the RV to see if it showed more of the little dirt roads. We have had a little trouble with the plug-in on the one in the RV, so our second trip back to the RV was to get the cord for the Jeep one (that I had just taken inside) in case we couldn't keep this one working. But Joe finally figured out a way to wrap the cord to keep it going, so we were good after that. We headed back to the National Park to drive the loop. We saw some wildlife, nice views, an interesting prairie dog bulletin board that showed how they tunnel underground. There weren't many of them out in the rain, but we saw more later.
We saw a band of feral horses in the distance. I told Joe I wanted to see some right by the road. And lo and behold, around the next turn, this one showed up. He was actually crossing the road when we came upon him, then he stopped for us.
We took a side road to the top of Buck Overlook, and there were 2 of these horses right by the parking lot. We got pretty close before they walked away a few feet.
We actually hiked up to the top of this trail (elevation 2,855 ft.). Had to stop a couple times to catch our breath. Nice view but very, very chilly up there (46 degrees and very windy).
Joe kept trying to get closer to the horses. He took some selfies on his phone, trying to get the horses in the background, and this one on our camera.
Back 20 miles or so on the highway yesterday, we saw a side road to a coal vein that has been burning for years. There are a couple places here in the Park with coal veins burning -- we don't know if it is the same vein. We tried to capture a picture of some of the smoke coming out of this one, but it really doesn't show up very good.
Another interesting thing was some of the rock/sandstone or dirt formations (not sure what makes them up). Some of them look like the hoodoos in Bryce National Park.
We got about 23 miles in on this 35-mile loop and came to the road closure the woman at the Park entrance had told us about, so we had to turn around. We have about 12 miles to go to finish it but decided to wait until later to do that, so we returned to the Park entrance and town. Our wildlife count on the 23 miles was: turkeys 2, mule deer 2, antelope 1, bull elk 1, feral horses 14, and buffalo approximately 39. And some geese and prairie dogs. No big horn sheep today. We had lunch in town at a little cafe, and our waitress said we might get a little snow tonight.
I'm happy to say we are still on the lilac trail. Not as many in this little town, but we found a few bushes, and some at the entrance to the Park.
It started raining again, so we went back to the RV for the rest of the day. We thought we might go back to finish the Loop in the Park about dusk, but the weather was just too nasty, so we stayed in. Will see what tomorrow brings.
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