Our 2020 Wind River Fall Foliage Trip: Day One

Our 2020 Wind River Range Fall Foliage Tour: Day One

US-212, otherwise known as the Beartooth Highway, is one of the 150 “distinct and diverse roads designated by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation” as a National Scenic Byway or All-American Road. In S. A. Snyder’s Scenic Driving MONTANA, it is Scenic Drive #13 Beartooth Highway: Silver Gate to Red Lodge. If you travel all the way to Silver Gate, the drive is almost seventy miles. We would not be going that way, however, as we turned left onto US-310, just after passing the tiny unincorporated community called Rockvale, a mere quarter hour south of Laurel. From the junction with US-212, it is a little over sixteen miles to the charming little town named for famed mountain man Jim Bridger. There is a very nice rest area on the left side of the road, about two and one half miles to the north of Bridger, Montana. This is the Pryor Mountains Rest Area and is located at mile marker 29. There is a sign at this rest area that tells about one of the earlier inhabitants of the area. It was called Deinonychus (for “terrible claw”) and was a formidable foe to its enemies. Many of you might be familiar with its more-famous “cousin” ‘for lack of better word’, the velociraptor. If you have seen any of the Jurassic Park movies, you know what I am talking about. Unlike the movie, however, the velociraptor was not six to seven feet tall. Although the Deinonychus was approximately ten feet tall, the velociraptor was about the size of a turkey. So Hollywood, once again, got it wrong. Yale professor John Ostrom, in 1964, discovered the fossil of one of these early Cretaceous Period creatures near this resting spot along our way to the Wind River Mountains.

Four and a half miles south of the rest area, and a little over two miles past Bridger, we turned right onto Montana State Route 72. Doug spotted a golden eagle on top of a telephone pole about three miles from the Wyoming state line. Busy with driving, I failed to see the bird. After driving twenty-one miles we crossed the Montana/Wyoming border. Our trip meter read 66.3 miles at this point. MT-72 became Wyoming State Highway 120 at the border. Forty miles later saw us pulling into the larger city named for famed scout and buffalo hunter William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody. The trip meter read 103.9 miles when we reached Cody.

For those of you who love the west, a must see is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West at 720 Sheridan Avenue on the western side of Cody. Tickets for adults are $19.75 and for children, ages 6-17, $13.25. Kids under 6 are free. These tickets are good for two consecutive days. This article, however, is not about that wonderful conglomeration of five museums in this quant western city a mere hour from the famed Yellowstone National Park. That’s for another time.

The Cody Country Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center is just down the street from the Buffalo Bill Center, and anyone that stops there can pick up a map of the city with possible Cody destinations on the back. Use this to help navigate the city streets until you find yourself back on Wyoming 120 headed south toward the town of Thermopolis. It’s a straight shot of a little over eighty miles to the small metropolis in the middle of the Wind River Basin, a very arid part of Wyoming. There was nothing special to see. We did stop at a very nice rest area, southeast of Meeteetse, about fifty miles from Cody. As I have stated many times, I take advantage of pull offs wherever they pop up. Out here in the wide open areas of the west, they can be few and far between. This pitstop, along the way to Pinedale, Wyoming, our ultimate destination for the night, was near mile marker 37 on WY-120.

A few miles south of Thermopolis, however, US 20/WY 789 takes a thirty-three mile jaunt through the Wind River Canyon. It’s a beautiful drive through a narrow river valley. It’s not as nice as some that I have seen, but well worth the time.  To the right, or west side, of this valley, lie the Owl Creek Mountains, which top out at 9,874 feet. To the east, Copper Mountain, of the Bridger Mountains (not to be confused with the mountain range of the same name that overlooks Bozeman, Montana), reaches 8,300 feet into the Wyoming sky. The Owl Creek Range, which connects the Absaroka chain with the Bridger/Big Horn Mountains to the east, resides entirely within the Wind River Indian Reservation. Portions of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshoni tribes inhabit this land set apart for Native Americans. In Laurence Parent’s Scenic Driving WYOMING, this is Scenic Drive #25; Wind River Canyon: Shoshoni to Thermopolis.

Shoshoni, Wyoming, with a population of around 650 citizens, is roughly half the distance from Billings, Montana to Pinedale, Wyoming. We had traveled just over 224 miles when we reached the small town in Fremont County. It is approximately forty-seven miles, via US-26 W and WY-789 S to the city of Lander, Wyoming, the county seat of Fremont County. This small city of about 7,500 citizens is the largest population center near the east side of the Wind River Range.

From Lander, we headed southeast on US-287 for about nine miles before a junction with WY-28 took us south by southwest to the famous South Pass of the Rocky Mountains. We came upon a rest area a little over forty miles from Lander and just before arriving at the historic landmark of South Pass. There was a stretch of around five miles that was heavily concentrated with aspen. These trees were at or very near their peak fall color of brilliant yellow or electric gold. This area was just north of the South Pass City turnoff.

South Pass, designated as a United States National Historic Landmark on January 20, 1961, is a pass, or rather two mountain passes on the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. South Pass, at 7,412 feet, is the lowest point on the Continental Divide between the Central and Southern Rocky Mountains. This natural crossing point of the Rockies was discovered in 1812 by members of John J. Astor’s Pacific Fur Company. Due to the War of 1812, however, South Pass would have to be rediscovered, this time by members of William Henry Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1823. Captain Benjamin Bonneville, in 1832, blazed a wagon road across the pass, just in time for the mass immigration of eastern settlers to what would become the west coast states of California and Oregon. The first family of pioneers, the Walkers, Joel and his wife Mary, as well as their four children, crossed the pass in 1840 with the intention of settling in Oregon. They would be the first of about 400,000 settlers that would travel west across the Oregon Trail.

From South Pass, a little over half an hour brought us to Farson, Wyoming, the last stop on our way to Pinedale, the end of our day’s journey. With a population of less than 150 souls, this tiny waypoint in Southwest Wyoming is a really cold spot. The average low temperature during the winter months of January and February is below zero. From Farson, we took US-191 N the rest of the way. Just under an hour later found us pulling into the parking lot of the Best Western Pinedale Inn. The total distance from our apartment in Billings, Montana to Pinedale, Wyoming was 408 miles. We spent a night in this very comfortable place last year (2019) and this time, we used it as a base of operations for our visitation of the Wind River Range. We would spend two nights there, and I highly recommend this inn for any visitors to the area. The room was everything we could ask for, and they had a very good breakfast, not just a continental one, or coffee only which is what Motel 6 will usually provide. Before the Covid virus hit, the Pinedale Inn had a do-it-yourself buffet. This time, however, they had a server provide the heated portions of the meal. With one of those new flip-style waffle makers, we had a choice of buttermilk or blueberry waffles and scrambled eggs, with bacon one day and sausage gravy and biscuits on the other one. They, also had coffee, milk and juice dispensers, as well as cold cereal and some pastries. All in all this was a very good breakfast included in the price of the room. For two of us, consider that $20 off the price of the room.

I did not stop to take any photographs on this, first day, of our journey. I wanted to reach the Wind River Mountains as quickly as possible. I knew there would be ample opportunities for pictures once I got to Pinedale.