South Dakota to Stanley, Idaho

Previous: Badlands National Park

South Dakota to Idaho via National Historic Trails

July 4

Our target for the day’s ride was going from the Badlands National park to Kemmerer, Wyoming, about 7 hours away. We scored a reservation at the Best Western in Kemmerer. Expedia showed the motel as being booked, and so did their website, but I called and easily reserved a room over the phone. Old school for the win!

We took the spectacular auto tour scenic route along parts of the Oregon, Mormon Pioneer, California, and Pony Express National Historic Trails. There was absolutely fantastic and varied landscape everywhere. Mountain ranges were constantly in sight, and lots of open space. There were not many cars but amazing scenery.

 

We drove through Lost Springs, Wyoming (population 4), and then stopped for a great lunch in Casper, Wyoming at the insanely over-the-top kitschy Grub & Pub restaurant, which, of course, we found via the Roadside America app.

We made a Roadside America stop in Douglas, Wyoming.  In Douglas, the “Jackalope capital of the World” whose motto is “we know jack”, we took pics with the world’s largest jackalope statue, and some very cool historic trains at the Douglas Railroad Museum.  Another worthy detour.

 

We stopped at Split Rock interpretive site roadside turnout. Split Rock is a natural gunsight notch rock formation that was used for navigation purposes by Oregon Trail pioneers. It is a cool piece of history in the middle of absolutely nowhere along the various National Historic Trails, otherwise known as highway 287!  During the final 30 minutes of the day’s drive we met with some very hard rain. These last 30 minutes also included an isolated road where roadside pronghorn were abundant. We both had to alertly watch out for them as they sporadically, out of nowhere, darted across the road.

After the rain and playing pronghorn pinball, and just as we got into Kemmerer, we were rewarded with a gorgeous double rainbow!

We settled into the Kemmerer Best Western at about 8:00 p.m. After a long day on the road we were fortunate that this was an excellent hotel…like an oasis. We watched fireworks being set off in the short distance by Kemmerer townsfolk from our bed through the hotel room window.

July 5

Soda Springs to Stanley, Idaho

After an excellent breakfast at the Best Western we headed out toward Stanley, Idaho by 9:00 a.m.  Along the way, we stopped in Montpelier, Wyoming to visit the Butch Cassidy Bank Robbery Museum.  This museum is actually the last remaining building that housed a bank robbed by Butch Cassidy.  The man working the place was truly a Butch Cassidy die-hard fanatic.  He could have talked all day about him…no wait…he did talk all day about him.  Fun stop.

On the road again, and we again took a detour to see an attraction we learned about on our Roadside America app.  This was a great detour, and our timing was excellent.  It was the Soda Springs Geyser in Soda Springs, Idaho ,the world’s only captive geyser. This means it’s an active geyser that is manually controlled to go off. It shoots off about 70’ in the air every hour on the hour.  We happened to get there about 15 minutes before the hour.  There were maybe 2 or 3 other people there when we got there, but slowly but surely more people showed up as the top of the hour neared.  The mineral springs geyser did not disappoint the dozens of people who gathered to see it.

Another couple there told us that they also learned of the geyser on an app similar to ours as they were driving cross country…very funny. Our visit to Soda Springs lasted about an hour.

At about 4 hours outside of Stanley we drove through Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, as we thought we might stop there to hop in a hot mineral spring pool for a break.  But, OMG…the place is a total zoo!  It was like Disney World.  We weaved and bobbed our car around dozens of people walking around town with inner tubes. Just hundreds of people, mostly families in the streets and sidewalks.  Just passing through, thank you very much!

Next: Sawtooth Mountains Hiking