Wind Songs: Carter Mountain Access Road

I have never seen Wyoming so green before.

I didn't even know that Wyoming could GET so green.

But here we are two days before June, and the weather recently has been cool, windy, and rainy.

We have had more rain over the past month than I have ever seen here before, and the world looks crisp, clean and anything but the beige world that I am so used to in Wyoming.

A few days ago my Mountain Boy and my dog and I drove out the South Fork, heading towards Carter Mountain Access Road.

I am not sure why, but we have never driven this road before.

The picture above is of Castle Rock.

It is located about 20 miles south of Cody, in straight up farming country, and adjacent to the Shoshone National Forest.

It is beautiful beautiful beautiful out here.

Homes are disgustingly expensive and get only more beautiful and more expensive the further down the South Fork you travel.

The farms are surrounded in all directions by mountains...............

Not long after passing Castle Rock, we turned left off the highway and immediately began to climb.

We were on private land, but were traveling on a dirt and gravel public road the cut it's way through this private property.

Every quarter mile we would see signs posted reminding travelers that this was private property and to stay on the road.

As we have done in other explorations of the past, LC and I drove in amazement.

Amazement at the beauty of the land.

Amazement that we were traveling through endless miles of private property on public roads that cut through it.

The land at this elevation looked like BLM land - mostly treeless, endless sage brush and hills.

I had never seen this kind of land so green before.

The rain has made beautiful land even more beautiful..............

We still had a long way to climb, but I asked LC to stop the truck for a moment so that I could snap these pictures, looking down over the farm land we had just passed by before turning off............

And a look at where we were headed.

Neither LC nor I knew exactly where we were going.

We weren't certain how far we would be able to travel before public access ended, but as I looked up into the high mountains ahead of us, I hoped that we would be able to travel a long way.

Maybe even all the way into these mountains............

Rain bands making their way over the mountains from the south, and heading in our direction............

As LC slowly drove the winding, climbing road, I was snapping pictures furiously - trying to capture on my digital camera the magnitude of the mountains.

They were behind us, they were to the south of us, they were directly in front of us, they were visible looking back towards Cody.

Looking at these pictures now I realize that my camera could not do the terrain justice.

The world around us was absolutely empty and silent and it was enormous.

An endless world of mountain and sky.

What the camera DID capture though, were the colors of the world.

All of the endless different shades of blue and green and grey and brown.

So different from Tennessee or Alaska.

The "different" of it all still takes my breathe away.

Even after being back in Wyoming for almost a year now.................

Somewhere in these pictures there is one lone antelope.

I don't remember which pictures and can't see him when the pictures are all this size.

If you click on the pictures they will enlarge, and maybe you can find Waldo.

He stood on a rise a few hundred yards away and when Jamie started barking at him he began running.

These beige, black and white, very skittish and fast moving animals blend seamlessly with the terrain............

A look back at the road we had just traveled..............

We had been climbing for 30 minutes and still had a long way to go..............

As well as mountains all around us, we were also surrounded by increasingly unsettled weather.

Bands of rain were passing over the mountains to our south, and were working their way in our direction.

A strong, dark and ominous looking band had also made its way through a canyon, and was also heading our way.

We were taking the day as it came. We would continue to climb as long as the road would allow us to. We would continue climbing as long as the weather held up............

We had driven 30 minutes beyond Buffalo Bill Reservoir, and had been climbing on the access road for well over 30 minutes.

And so I was surprised when we stopped the truck one more time so that I could climb out to take pictures, and realized that I was looking down over the reservoir again.

It was a long way from where we were, but it looked as though I could just walk down the hill and go for a swim.

I loved the quiet of this people-less place.................