Days 13 & 14 (Wednesday/Thursday)

On July 21st, we drove to Lovell, Wyoming, which is an LDS settlement in the Big Horn Basin. We drove from 3000 feet in elevation up to 10000 feet in about ten or fifteen minutes. Mom had to drive that stretch so that she wouldn't get sick. The Big Horn mountains were beautiful and we hiked 3 miles round trip to the medicine wheel at the top. Eighty-one Indian tribes go there to meditate and pray. We were starving, so we ate at a restaurant with four dead stuffed animal heads over our table. Amy was disgusted. Dad ordered an elk burger, but the rest of us weren't so daring. After lunch, we saw a female and a male moose.

Here is Amy, Dad, and Josh in the Bighorn Mountains:

At the medicine wheel, there were lots of dream catchers and cloths tied on the fence around it:

Here is a moose we saw while driving:

Here is our lunch restaurant:

After lunch, we drove to Thermopolis, Wyoming. We went to the world's largest mineral hot springs there, and we absolutely loved it. It had an outdoor pool and hot tub, an indoor pool and hot tub, a closed tube slide indoors, an open top slide outdoors that you slide down on mats, a tiny outdoor slide, and a high diving board. It was a blast. We stayed for about two hours, then we were exhausted and famished, so we ate dinner at Subway and Taco John's. We wanted a hotel in Lander, but we called about 10 hotels and they were all full, so we continued 100 miles to Casper, where we finally found a Ramada. It was right on the North Platte river. We swam the next morning, but the pool was freezing and the hot tub was under repair. Josh and I got in the hot tub when the temperature was about 112 degrees (normal hot tubs are 104. No wonder our skin was tingling...) After our swim, we drove home to Laramie and got home in the early afternoon. Dad decided to do a little experiment during our vacation and see how he would look after growing out his facial hair for two weeks. We took a picture when we got home:

It was a great trip but it was nice to be back home.