It's about 900 miles between Deadwood, SD and Bryce Canyon, UT, and there's a whole lot of nothing in between. I did 500 miles on Sunday and made it to Rock Springs, WY, which is near the middle of the state and just a a few miles north of the Wyoming / Utah border. Leaving Rock Springs this morning, I made a last second decision to take the exit for Hwy 191, which runs down the east side of Utah's Wasatch Mountains, instead of taking I-80 over to Salt Lake City, and then I-15 south, which goes down the west side of the range. And what a great decision that turned out to be.
This route begins by going through about 80 miles of open range - meaning, there are no fences to keep live stock off the road. So, you have to keep an eye out for horses, deer, and cattle. The horses tended to run away when they heard, or saw me coming, but I came within about 5 feed of a big doe that was just standing on the side of the road (I didn't see it until I was right on top of it). Then I came upon the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
The name Flaming Gorge comes from the red iron in the rock formations.
The reservoir is 90 miles long, covers over 42,000 square acres, and is over 400 feet deep.
The dam was completed in 1964, rises 455 feet above the river channel, and is made out of 1 million cubic yards of concrete.
Wyoming is relatively high in elevation. Casper and Rock Springs are at 5,200 and 6,200 feet of elevation, respectively. Going into Utah, I thought I'd generally be going down-hill in elevation, but I had to cross several 8,000 foot summits, and one pass that was at 9,100 feet. Got to see a lot of these beautiful yellow aspen groves along the way.
I finished the day at Richfield, Utah, which is only about 100 miles from Bryce Canyon - something I can knock out early tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment