Hiking for Hope: Soaking...Part Deux: Day Two

Three States in One Day (One New One)!

Well, I MADE it to SLC the first day, but I sure didn't wake up the next morning feeling like I could so much as get out of bed, let alone go on further! So it was a very slo-o-o-ow morning. We visited with our friends and didn't even say our goodbyes and leave until after 12:30 in the afternoon. Good thing it was our "short" day, right?

We didn't have far to go before we turned Big Blue east and headed toward Park City, Utah and Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We've never been in Wyoming, so this is another state to add to our list of "places seen" (I like that). Once again, I'll let the pictures tell the story for me; so enjoy!

Leaving Salt Lake City, the area is dry and covered with buttes...

...and rock formations...

...before giving way to the mountainous area around Park City, Utah.

Then, many of the Wyoming miles look just like this...

...but if you look closely, you can see a herd of ANTELOPE!

(They all turned and ran the instant they heard our vehicle stop!)

I had once again located hot springs along our route in which we could stop and soak; and since my body was REALLY hurting after YESTERDAY'S miles, there was NO WAY I was passing it up. So we turned south of the highway for a little 20-mi detour. AAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhh!

The bridge over the river near the hot springs.

The hot springs pool and bath house.

These hot springs are 129 deg and have no cold water mixed with it,
so a dunk in the pool it feeds lasted no longer than 3 to 5 minutes!

Crystal clear right to the sandy bottom!

Aaahhh! This is what I came here for!

I bet we didn't soak more than half an hour there, it was so hot! But boy, did it nearly INSTANTLY relax the muscles in my back that were painin' me. We climbed back into BB at sunset and headed back to the highway.

The Wyoming sunset in our rear window.

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and the crescent moon gave us a beautiful view as we stopped in Laredo for Mickey D's fruit smoothie and coffee drinks. Sadly, I couldn't get any decent night pictures of the beautiful sky.

As we left Laredo, I could see the light pollution of Cheyenne; from Cheyenne I could see the light pollution of Boulder, CO. But that was NOTHING compared to the light pollution of the Denver area.

The last time I flew through Denver, the city and its bedroom communities had sprawled into quite a metropolis. Now, it's a nearly endless megalopolis. Wow!

Since we have friends in the area, that's what we did on Sunday and again during the work week (when I wasn't sleeping; the trip quite broke me [again], but at least the hotel fed me meals). On the last night of our time in Denver, we took off to a hot springs not too far away with some of our friends. These waters have been sought out by the Native Americans as healing waters since early times, and they have the bonus of being in a CAVE!

Painting depicting early native American annual migration to the hot springs.

Heading down the stairwell to the hot springs.

Unfortunately for the photography side of this blog, it was VERY steamy in there! We loved it; plus the water was 115 deg. We soaked till absolute noodledom bliss! So you can bet our last night there, we slept WELL!