Day 8 - Cody, WY to Rapid City, SD

Barb didn’t feel very good this morning, so we got a late start at 8:53. First day without coffee and I’m still trying to figure out how I got going. Did remember to get gas for the car, thereby eliminating the need to call AAA later on.

Started out heading East on Highway 16 to Greybull, Wyoming, where I stopped to replenish the supply of Myers Rum. Got to take care of the important things early on. No espresso in sight so continued south to Worland, Wyoming, where we picked up a sandwich at Subway to eat later on. Highway 16 continues east to Buffalo and along the way is the town of Ten Sleep. There is a nice park at the end of town, which turned out to be our lunch stop. Ten Sleep seems like an odd name for a town, so BlackBerry in hand and a strong signal I did a little internet search. Turns out the town site was a rest stop for American Indians and it was ten days travel or ’10 sleeps’ from Fort Laramie in one direction and an Indian Agency in Montana in another direction. Therein is the history lesson for today.

After lunch a nice drive to Buffalo through the Bighorn Mountains. We felt very fortunate to have only one idiot in front of us try to pass a car on a curve and over a double yellow line. I say try, because he was barely able to get back in time.

Buffalo saw the end of two lane roads as we found our way to Interstate 90 and headed east. This part of the day was about making up time from leaving late rather than scenery (which there wasn’t much of.) Skirting the Black Hills National Forest after entering South Dakota did improve the scenery and carried us to Rapid City. Dinner at Red Lobster and done for the day, except for this little task. 404 miles today.