Big Sky Country–Day 4

Around noon, after the festivities ended at Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer, South Dakota, we headed down from the Black Hills into eastern Wyoming and had to give up our detour northwards to Devils Tower, also in the Black Hills. There just wasn't enough time this trip–I suggested that we might fold that into a trip to Yellowstone National Park some day.

From east-central Wyoming we headed south with the Denver area our ultimate goal to visit with relatives for a few days. The drive was glorious: when the weather is right, "big sky" country is spectacular to drive through and we were treated to mountains, mesas, buttes, cattle and various wildlife along the way.

In northern Colorado we even saw snow. According to the Weather Channel they are about to get a huge blizzard there in the next forty-eight hours: up to two feet in some parts and about a foot in suburban Denver where we were visiting. I now believe that we picked the perfect late autumn window for our western excursion!

We enjoyed the spare openness of the Wyoming range but I have to say I would miss the hills of Kentucky (or New England) after a while. There is something so liberating about driving in open country like this–you sense the breadth and scope of this country and how, despite how populated it is, there are still miles of open, uninhabited land in the big square states of the great American West.

I'll let the photographs speak for themselves. They are more or less in chronological order and most were taken from our car window–don't worry: my husband was driving and I was shooting–at a "reasonable and proper" rate of speed.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine