Medicine Wheels, Canyons, and Hot Springs - oh my!

After leaving Yellowstone, having been to Glacier, and Craters of the Moon, you could say the remaining days of out trip was a bit of a denouement. We headed east through Wyoming to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel. Despite the fact that a road stretches all the way to the wheel, which is set high atop a hill, up a steep and winding road, you must park about a mile from the wheel and walk the rest of the way. The medicine wheel is something like a simple Stonehenge. It has astronomically significant alignments, and was especially useful for marking the summer solstice. It consists of rows and circles of piled rocks, in the general shape of a wheel. The walk to it was steep, and there was a biting wind, but it was worth it.

There is a barb wired fence around the wheel, and a path outside of the that you walk counter clockwise around, in respect for the traditional practice. Native Americans still hold ceremonies here, and many leave offerings tied to the fence, in the form of small brightly colored bundles of cloth, or braids of grass. Less traditional offering, such as bandannas, probably come from the few tourists who may actually find their way here. Another bonus for making the walk to the wheel was seeing picas, which are like teeny weenie bunny rabbit mice. They are cute beyond belief.

After the Medicine Wheel, we went to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. This is a narrow canyon with a green river flowing in a tan hued landscape. There is not a lot of plant life here, but there are the namesake Bighorn, which have made a comeback in the area. There are also wild horses, and we saw a small family near the road on our way in. They are grayish with a black mane, and, if you look, they have horizontal black stripes across their legs in the back. This fascinated me, because it relates to some of Darwin's theories on evolution, about how when modern species or breeds intermix, you tend to see what are the most basic characteristics, and therefore the characteristic of the common ancestors. So here are stripes on a horse, when none of the parent horses would have had them, showing perhaps a trait that is dormant in them, but exemplified in the zebra.

We then headed south toward Thermopolis. The plan had originally been to spend the remainder of the day hanging out at the free to the public hot spring/baths here, but after my visit to Yellowstone and learning about all the nasty extremophile disease causing bacteria that live in hot springs, I'm afraid I lost interest. So we headed instead towards our destination for the next day, which was Fossil Butte National Monument. We got as far a Kemmerer before stopping for the night. It also happened to be the home of James "Cash" Penney, who started the now national chain right here in this little town.