Cody Wyoming to Rapid City South Dakota

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Cody is a small town in cowboy country. We found it legitimate because its main street is wide enough to allow a cart drawn by a team of oxen to turn around. This was the same rationale for wide streets we heard in Bulawayo. Today we headed East, and South, across Big Horn National Forest and down to the high plains. Lunching in Gillette at the Railroad Restaurant (yes, alongside the tracks) we discovered that Wyoming is the source of 40% of the coal produced in the US, and that almost all of the mines were clustered around us. So we headed South to Wright, ostensibly the top end of the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, to see if we could see any. And we found a few. Large open pit mines with mile long trains carrying the coal away -- in the middle of a National Grassland. Huh? Talk about multiple use. Not many wind turbines in this area. We were only to see them 'en masse' when we got to Minnesota. Crossed the Black Hills into South Dakota, and saw the profile of the Crazy Horse statue carved into a Hill. And on down into the urban sprawl of Rapid City SD, a town that played an important role in the railroad expansion and the opening of the West to settlers.

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