Suzanne's Blog: Day 15 - Greybull, WY to Buffalo, WY via Thermopolis and Wind River Canyon

Today was a pretty relaxed day. We left Greybull, headed for Thermopolis and the "world's largest mineral hot spring" at Hot Springs State Park. There are several places you can enjoy the hot springs here, but we had planned to use the state bath house because it was free, but upon arrival we saw that they didn't open until noon. Not wanting to waste 2 hours, we paid to use the hot springs at the Star Plunge instead. They had a water slide, an indoor and an outdoor pool, a steam cave, and several hot tubs. I think we tried them all! It was nice to relax in the hot water for a while and it wasn't very crowded, which was also nice.

After we finished soaking, we rode south towards Shoshoni to pass through Wind River Canyon. This is part of the Wind River Indian Reservation that we were in earlier when we stayed in Riverton. The Wind River empties into Boysen Reservoir, northeast of Riverton, but when it leaves the reservoir it changes its name to the Bighorn River. We rode along the Bighorn to see the many layers of rock exposed by millennia of erosion - truly amazing to see. They even have signs along the way naming the rock formations and the geologic time period in which they were deposited. We saw, throughout the day, rock formations from the Pre-cambrian era (3 billion years ago), the cambrian (500-600 million years ago), the Pennsylvanian, Jurassic, Triassic, and Cretaceous. No wonder there's a dinosaur center nearby! This whole area is a geologist's and paleontologist's dream.

After turning around in the canyon and heading back to Thermopolis, we turned east towards Ten Sleep, a road that my dad had never tried before. It turned out to be a great ride, with plenty of climbs, curves, and descents. Very picturesque!