August 24-26, 2017 Riverton to Thermopolis, Wyoming

The new propane detector came in today. John got it installed, it seems to work better than the old one, so we are ready to go. A grasshopper chowing down on a burr.

 Now that the table and table cloth are no longer part of my sales booth we had dinner in the back yard today. The view both directions. No campers around the lake now. Sunset over the rendezvous grounds with no people. 

Same sunset over the last Teepee standing. We took off for Thermopolis in the morning. We drove through Shoshoni, the Boyson State Park, into Thermopolis. Through town we saw  Loonie's Bin, Camp Run Amok, a bronze cowboy and his horse, Hot Springs state park, multiple brands and of course there is the One Eyed Buffalo Brewery. 

We drove though Wind River Canyon. In town here is the Elk antler Inn and beautiful historic downtown Thermop as we called it when I lived in Wyoming. 

The Hot Spring Park that we hope to visit today. We are parked at the Fountain of Youth RV park. It is a dumpy park-dead grass, weeds, rundown buildings, but is includes some really beautiful hot spring pools.

In 1992 my friend Pat and I went on a week long car trip in Wyo. We stayed at this same Fountain of Youth then. It was much the same then, but in better shape. Sue and Pat with the Maid in the pool, we called it the Nymph then. She-the nymph not Pat  is long gone, only the pedestal is left.  There was grass, but no trees between us and the train. The pools are still lovely. Here is the pool that had the Maid, the pedestal is on the left of the top photo. The spring itself is the same, pictured here during the day and the night. They have kept the pools up nicely.

 Flowers by the pool, a steer horn, a sign by the spring inlet that says extreme hot water- it is 130 degrees and the train going by the pool. The spring was formed when drilling for oil, they hit hot water and it still running strong. I don't know how to get rid of this highlighted text. Sorry.The pool is wonderful. The front of the One Eyed Buffalo Brewery, John and I at the Buffalo. Behind John are two people from Boulder we met who just got back from a week long backpack in the Wind River range to watch the eclipse. 

We walked around the Hot Springs State Park in downtown Thermopolis today. It is lovely. The top photo of the Teepee hot spring was built as a brick teepee in 1910 to vent the springs and cool the water.  The minerals in the water have built up on the teepee over the years.See the brick teepee in the inset. The other photo is the color of some of the springs.

The Mineral Terrace where the spring water flows into the river. We walked across the suspension bridge for the view and back through the park. The trappers called the pools Smoking waters originally. 

The Star Plunge water park with three water slides, a couple pools and a vapor cave are near the hot springs park. I remember going there in high school and riding the slide. I think there was only one then. Flowers in the park, a buffalo totem pole called into the wind, sunflowers in front of the Bighorn river, the Rotary club was having there turtle race in the park today. John wanted to go to the Tensleep brewery, in Tensleep. Liz in the brewery last night told him it was only 10 miles away. So without a map we headed that way, only to discover it was 60 miles away. We turned around in Worland. That should teach him to listen to women in the bar!

We also went to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. It is a huge warehouse with 30 full sized dinosaur skeletons and more. It was very good.There was a supersaurus that was 106 feet long stretching from one side to the other. Also a nest of baby dinosaurs, a couple playing like puppies, a trilobite mass death, slab o'crinoids, John photo bombing a stegosaurus and mega mouth was a 27 foot fish dinosaur and much more.