After the tourist filled trip into Yellowstone, we were relived to find the road East empty and scenic.We wound through some really amazing roads, paved like a snake crawling through boulders and canyons. The North Eastern edge of Yellowstone is called the Beartooth Wilderness, and like the name suggests, it's jagged mountain ridges look like the dramatic country from the old wild west.
We slept on a dusty side road which looked to be an old, dried up reservoir, it was windy and flat with only knee high scrubs and cacti dotting the landscape. We cautiously drove the Camry off road into a small, cracked, gusty valley and cooked our humble meal in the shelter of the rear wheel. As it got dark small desert foxes yapped and howled as a massive moon rose over the empty landscape; it was like sleeping on an empty planet.
With no curtains, the moon's powerful rays kept me up all night. I often peered out the window looking for the shadows of the small little yappers and at one point a desert owl made a scratch landing on the car, I could hear its talons screeching as it walked about above our heads.
Sleep deprived we entered Wyoming on the I-90 where we found a tiny town to do laundry and enjoyed the friendly local “corn feed” types. We decided to splurge on a small log cabin, the owner treated us like family and cooked us dinner. I ended up posing in front of her husbands extensive hunting trophies. We drove out of Wyoming the next day, but it was by far the most inviting of the empty farming states we had seen so far.
Like the local boys told us "it's real nice here, but there just isn't anything to do or see; but sometimes one of the hunting dogs needs its guts stitched up, my granny does it on the back porch; that's interesting.”