From the Black Hills of South Dakota to Cody, Wyoming

After having seen the huge Crazy Horse being sculpted in the granite of the Black Hills we drove down the scenic Highway 14 to Spearfish where we took a break at a coffee shop and wrote our blog and emails. The reason why these hills are called black is simply because the green colour of the pine trees appears almost black from a distance. Somehow the green is darker there than elsewhere.

Our goal yesterday was to get to Wyoming, the cowboy state and then as far west in the state as possible but at first it seemed as if we were not going to get far at all. Indeed, instead of taking the Interstate 90 west we got lost back in the Black Hills. The road we accidentally took led us through a magnificent canyon with waterfalls and cliffs on both sides. When we finally realized that we were heading south instead of west we found that the shortest way to correct our error was to drive down the road we had come from. Back in Spearfish a couple of hours later we finally found the highway and started heading west.

The landscape of the Wyoming plains is not comparable to what we had seen before; Endless hilly grasslands with small canyons and cows grazing here and there. These fields were much greener than the plains of Minnesota and South Dakota.