Day 36: Heading South

Thursday
We had planned to stop a couple of nights in Thermopolis, but, having decided that we would not swim in the hot springs, I made a tactical error and we continued to Riverton for the night. Stayed in a nice campground, but it was overrun with full timers, most of whom seemed to work with Pickup trucks that required leaving at 5 minute intervals from 6.00 a.m.
However it was a lovely run from Cody to Riverton, over the rolling Wyoming hills. We stopped at Meeteetse for a cup of tea/coffee at a chocolate shop, this entailed being forced to sample a 54% cocoa dark chocolate Brownie. Here we did see a bear, even if it was made from resin and had lost one arm (tastefully hidden in the photograph)
We drove through Thermopolis and had our lunch at the entrance to the wonderful Wind River Canyon. As we drove through we noticed that there were signs showing the succession of rock strata. At the North end the rocks are young, of Permian Age, some 225 million years old (myo), but because the strata have been tilted as we moved south, even though we were going uphill through the canyon  we were going down through the rock stata and they were becoming older and older as the rock layers beneath were being exposed. This tilting also had the effect of making it appear we were driving downhill and the river water was therefore flowing uphill, quite strange. There were convenient sings by the side of the road to show we were passing through Pennsylvanian, Ordovician, Cambrian strata and finally old Precambrian pink granite which was 2900 myo. Then after a couple of small tunnels we were through the canyon and then Lake Boysen appeared in front of us. From there is was a short drive to Riverton.
We did see quite a few Pronghorn, but they are quite shy and when we did get up close they kept turning their backside towards us. The other problem was that by the time we had picked them out from the sage brush, checked for traffic behind, slowed down and stopped without proving that Newtons laws of Motion would ensure that most objects in the van would tend maintain their velocity and end up piled up on the front dashboard and foot well, then we were well past the pronghorn, who would still turn their backside towards us and sashay off up the hill.