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Our last day in the area so we headed straight for the park this morning to check out the roads we'd not yet investigated. It's Saturday, close to the end of school holidays for some states and beautiful weather. All that adds up to a park chock full of people. We tried to get a park near Bear Lake to no avail so went instead to Sprague Lake. There were a lot of people fly fishing in a small lagoon which looked to be only a couple of inches deep, very strange lol there's quite a lot of people doing tours on horseback too. We walked a ways around the lake pausing to admire four little ducks, not yet adult but close to losing their baby fluffiness. They were snuggling up to each other on a log just taking in some sun.
Having checked out pretty much all the park we left via a more northern exit and found the flash part of town, beautiful cabins by the river which looked expensive but were still displaying no vacancy signs.
Back in Estes Park the quiet town of yesterday had been replaced with a full on tourist town, markets complete with bars and live music and masses of people. Time for us to head out lol
We followed the Big Thompson River, winding past cottages and lodges; fly fishermen and women all trying their hand in the river.
At one point I heard a noise that sounded like something hit my window frame. We had the windows wide open but Pete didn't notice when I mentioned it and we thought nothing more of it. About a half hour later Pete says, I don't want to alarm you but there's a dead bird in the back window! We pulled over and sure enough what I had heard must've been the bird hitting before its body whizzed in through the back window. Poor little thing was well gone so we just removed it and left it by the roadside.
By now it was past midday and the sun was fierce, close to 40C out of a clear blue sky. We crossed into Wyoming and drove through the familiar rolling plains with the occasional silhouette up high on a ridge of a metal cowboy, bison or some other western image. Here and there we passed the odd oil Derrick, doing its thing along the side of the highway.
We encountered a massive storm, it hung over us like a big black cap while in the distance we could see the rain and lightening. It rained briefly over us, the temp plummeting quickly to 20C before we outran it and the temp climbed once more to the high 30's.
We passed the occasional herd of cattle and some herds of small deer but otherwise it was mostly empty plains some of which had been cropped for hay. The only other relief from he grass was the occasional large number of bee hives.
We turned East and felt surrounded by huge coal trains, six or more all criss crossing the plains. We passed a sign to the town (?) of Lost Spring, it declared the population to be 4. It boasted a pub, store and even an antique store., possibly more but that's what we could see from the other side of the highway. With such a low pop they must have difficulty opening all businesses at once lol
We travelled almost the entire length of Wyoming, up the eastern edge along side Nebraska before turning East and crossing at Buffalo Gap national grasslands into South Dakota.
It wasn't long til we got to Hot Springs. Not much in itself but our destination for one reason, the mammoth site. We got into our hotel which was right next door to the the site, cooled off a bit and walked on over.
It's very cool, they've found over 60 mammoths in the sink hole as well as a few other critters like coyotes, mice and now extinct types of bear, camel and lama. Most of the bones they've found are still in situ.
Back to our room, did our washing and had dinner before planning where we are off to tomorrow.
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