Day 11 - Sinks Canyon State Park - headed for home

On a footbridge over the Popo Agie River - Sinks Canyon State Park

Wildlife Tally: pronghorn antelope, mule deer, magpie, trout

We have been heading steadily west for 10 days and we are now 2100 miles from home: two-thirds of the way across the US. It is time to head for home. It will take 3 1/2 days to get home. Today we travel across Wyoming with a stop at Sinks Canyon State Park. 

The cabin Susan would like to have - forget the kids!

Once we left the cabin, we climbed up and over the Togwogtee Pass. This is our highest elevation on this trip, 9600'. I don't know how those guys on the bikes did it. They must be in serious shape. 

The pass. I wonder what it looks like in the winter.

We decided to stop at Sinks Canyon to break up the trip. It turns out this state park is a little gem. It had a great visitor center. The kids really liked looking at a display of the skulls of a whole range of birds and mammals, including those we had seen in the past couple of weeks. There were also some of them whole - stuffed of course. 

We get a lot of snow in Syracuse - 128" a year in an average season. I asked in several places during our trip how much snow they get. It always made our total here look small. In talking to the park ranger here I found out they are in the third year of a drought. They only got 200" of snow the past couple of winters and the norm is 300". Our horseback guide plowed snow in Jackson Hole. Last year they had almost 400". 

Sinks Canyon is formed by the Popo Agie river. It has a very unusual feature. The river disappears into a cave. It travels underground somehow and It rises out of the rock floor of the canyon about 1/4 mile after it disappears. They don't understand where it goes but they have done dye tests and know that it takes about 2 hours to travel that short distance. They also know that more water rises than went in. There are trout that migrate up the river to spawn. Obviously they hit the end of the line at the rise. There is a big pool there and people feed them. They can't be fished so they just hang out and get huge - 2-3' long. We threw in pieces of bread. It was just a thrashing of fish the moment it hit the water. Feeding frenzy would be the proper term. A whole piece lasted just a couple of seconds before it was gone. Any pieces that missed the water and landed on shore were quickly snagged by magpies.

This is the rise taken from about 50' up. Most of these fish are 2-3' long.

Looking down the canyon from the rise of the river.

We had a nice picnic lunch here. The kids ate on the rocks in the middle of the river. 

Everything tastes better when you feet are wet and cool

Typical David - stressing his mother out

Unfortunately we had to cut this stop short and hit the road since we still had 4 hours left in the drive. I still am amazed how arid Wyoming is. Once you are out of the mountains, there are no trees unless there is a stream, lake, river or a house where someone waters the yard. There are incredibly huge spaces filled with sage brush, dry grass, rocks and dirt. With cattle sprinkled around. Ranching is it out here. It starts out being pretty and ends up being monotonous after driving through it for hours. 

They must get a lot of blowing snow on these roads because they are protected by snow fences. Not the piddly kind we have out east. These are big wooden structures 10-20' high, depending on where they are located. Sometimes there is only one row of them but in some spots they are 4 rows deep. They remind me of sentries doing guard duty.

Despite the winter, these roads are in fantastic shape. Not a pothole for hundreds of miles.

We arrived at our hotel about 7:30, got dinner and got some sleep to prepare for another day of driving.