Today’s adventure started last night at the Bryce Country Cabins. I wanted to shoot some more star trails as there was not a lot of light pollution in the area. I wanted to try one with the mountains as a backdrop and they were quite a distance away. What I decided to do was to shoot the mountains before sunset and then shoot the star trail and put the two together. It took some time, but it seemed to come out pretty good. I also shot some other star trails without anything in the foreground, and I like them also.
We had a bright and early start this morning. We are heading towards Yellowstone National Park. It is probably a nine- or 10-hour drive from where we are, and we wanted to get some miles behind us. We thought that we were finished with the beautiful beauty of the mountains in Utah. As we traveled along highway 12, we saw a beautiful mountain in the distance. I had to stop and get another photo.
The navigation system steered us towards our destination. We traveled along highway 12, which was a beautiful journey on our way in. What we weren’t prepared for was entering the Dixie National Forest and seeing Red Canyon.
It was beautiful and we loved every mile that we went through there. It was also cool when we went through a tunnel like arch that we had not experienced before. There were two of them and I only got photos of one.
Outside of Panguitch, Utah, the terrain changed. The red mountains were done and the mountains here were a much darker color.
We also encountered a runaway truck ramp sign. We had seen several of them in the mountains of Utah and Colorado and they have very upward sloped ramps to stop the trucks. The one after this sign only had a long straight road.
Our first major highway was I-15, and we made a stop in Beaver UT to supercharge. We have supercharged numerous times, but this was the largest supercharging station that I had ever seen. There were 20 four superchargers at this location. It allowed us to charge very quickly, and we were on our way north.
Driving on large highways can get to be boring and after a while the mountains were all looking the same and were barren. That was until we stopped to charge in Provo Utah. The mountains that surround Provo and the mountains that we encountered while we went through the city and then moved further north were breathtaking. Ronnie and I wondered whether people ever get used to this type of scenery when they live in this area.
While we were supercharging in Provo, we went and had a bite to eat. The charging session was over by the time we had finished lunch, and we were on our way again.
In Coalville, Utah We went on to I80 and headed east. We supercharged one more time in Evanston, Wyoming, which is where we saw our Welcome to Wyoming billboard. I was in the middle lane of I80, and I was not able to pull over to get a picture of the sign. This was our first time in Wyoming for either of us. Between Evanston and Rock Springs, we saw a beautiful lake that had some colorful trees that reflected into the water. I stopped for a few pictures and then we were on our way again.
We also saw a lot of windmills. We had not seen any in Utah but here they were along I80.
Our final stop for the night was in Rock Springs Wyoming. We checked into the Hampton Inn and settled down for the night. Tomorrow our plans are to drive and stay the night close to Yellowstone National Park. We are going to tour the park on Saturday and then begin our journey towards Mount Rushmore. It is a little over seven hours from Yellowstone to Mount Rushmore. We will probably spend a couple days at Mount Rushmore before we begin our journey home.
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