Wyoming is a very unique state. It has some of the prettiest places in the US but some of it is also some of the most desolate area in the US too. I lived in Wyoming for ten years and love part of it and very much dislike other parts of it.
Wyoming is our least populated state. According to the 2000 census there are 453, 588 people in the whole state of Wyoming and they have 97.914 square miles to spread out on.
Wyoming is home to the first national monument in the US at Devil’s Tower and the first national park at Yellowstone National Park. Devil’s Tower rises 1280 feet above the floor of the Belle Fourche River Valley and holds a lot of religious significance to the American Indians that live around the area. It was seen in the movie’’Close encounters of the Third Kind’’. It is a challenge to many rock climbers who visit the area each year. You can see it for miles off to the north of I-90 in northeastern Wyoming. Yellowstone National Park is in the northwest corner of the ’’Equality State’’. Yellowstone is a very beautiful area of steaming geysers, colorful pools, rushing rivers, towering waterfalls and beautiful lakes. There is no place else on earth with such a quantity of hot water geysers and scalding hot pools. The upper and lower falls on the Yellowstone River are quite beautiful. Old Faithful geyser erupts approximately every hour, spewing millions of gallons of scalding hot water and steam several hundred feet into the air. Earthquakes in the area several years ago altered its cycle a little but it is still basically every hour. Old Faithful Inn is a beautiful big log hotel and restaurant that hs been there for years and has been beautifully kept up.
My very favorite area in the state is just south of Yellowstone at Grand Tetons National Park. You talk about beautiful. I have seen mountains basically all over the world and they are all pretty but, .... there is no place quite like the Tetons. Most mountains have foothills but the Tetons go from nothing to 13, 700 feet in nothing flat. They are gorgeous. If you get to the area, be sure to take a float trip down the Snake River. It is a slow leisurely trip down a peaceful river where you will see the majestic moose eating in the marshes and the bald eagles flying over head. There is no more beautiful scenery anywhere.
Eastern Wyoming is more farms and ranches. The farms raise sugar beets, corn and hay and the ranches raise a lot of cattle and sheep.
Gillette, in the northeastern part of the state is known as ’’The Energy Capital of the US’’ because of all the coal and natural gas that is produced in the area. The seventeen active coal mines in the Powder River Basin produce nearly 500, 000 tons of coal a year and millions of barrels of natural gas.
Wyoming has its area that isn’t so pretty and the part is known as Gas Hills and is located southwest of Casper. There was millions of tons of uranium mined out of this area in the 60s when EPA wasn’t really concerned about reclamation. Between the uranium tailings and all the oil and natural gas wells what little vegetation ther was has been killed. We used to joke that a rabbit would have to carry a lunch to get from one blade of grass to the next one.
Wyoming has some beautiful places to see and it would be easy to spend a couple of weeks seeing the most interesting things.