Sometimes I know exactly where I am going. In that case it’s easy, pick a route and go.
More often I have an idea where I’d like to end up, and generally speaking a direction to go.
Once in a while I just follow the front wheel and see where it takes me.
So we had a little electrical trouble as we were crossing South Dakota and the is not much photographic proof that we made that part of the trip. We pick back up at Independence Rock, Wyoming. I got there because my GPS was part of the collateral damage from the problem.
Inedpenence Rock is a huge boulder that sits in the prairies of Wyoming roughly between Casper and Rawlins. Yeah, what most would call the middle of nowhere. As you can see here, there is a very nice rest area associated with Independence Rock.
Independence Rock sits just about right on the old Oregon Trail and is an enormous landmark. It got it's name from the travelers on the Oregon Trail. You wanted to be here on or before the 4th of July to make it through the Blue Mountains in Oregon before the snow. Snow in the Blues killed a lot of travelers.
To get a sense of scale of the size of this boulder, there are people in the previous photo. Very nearly center of the photo up on the rock itself. It was much too large to get in one frame on my phone so this is the other half.
Independence Rock is located just off Wyoming Highway 220, a narrow back road. There are several places where you can still see the wagon tracks of the Oregon Trail where they cross the highway.
There is another trail that split off from the Oregon Trail and headed up to Bozeman, Montana that got some fairly heavy use when gold was discovered in the area. As you can see this marker was placed in 1914 to highlight that trail.
These are wagon tracks that remain of the Bozeman Trail. The photo might not show them well, but you can see them distinctly right here. You can see the highway in this photo, too. Not much traffic.
My Mom's family came west after the Civil War, and spent at least part of their trip on the Oregon Trail.
Thanks for coming along for the ride!
[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 42.493370 lat -107.131105 long d3scr)
All words and photographs in this post are mine. For better or worse
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