Road Trip

So I guess it's taken longer than usual to get the first post of this blog started this year, but better late than never.  I'm thinking of changing the theme of this blog (that means the background pic) so if anyone is familiar with blogger and has a link to a suggestion, leave a comment.
The road trip this year seemed longer than usual.
First there was an almost 11-hour drive to Cleveland, OH where I picked up Jim, a volunteer for Tower Ranger Station (the station I am working at).  The next day there was another 9-hour drive to Iowa where I got to spend a (too) short stay with my family there.  After a day of no driving it was off to Valentine, NE, a short overnight camping stop.  The next day we drove through a scenic highway in Nebraska on our way to South Dakota.  I'll say this about scenic highways in NE: they are kinda boring.  Mostly just vast expanses of grassland, so I don't think I would reccomend it.  The scenic highways in Wyoming and Montana are much more interesting.
We then started driving through the black hills and made a stop at Wind Cave Natl Park.  I went on a 1.5 hour hike/tour/(spelunking?) through a part of the cave.  Being 200 ft underground was extremely exhilerating.  The ranger did the usual cave-tour thing at one point ant extinguished all the lights to show everyone on the tour whatthe cave looked like by candle light (the original light source that was used to explore the cave when it was first discovered) then all of the lights to see what true darkness looked like.  Right when the lights were out, someone passed gass which made the entire tour laugh.

Me at Wind Cave Natl Park

The drive through the black hills was quite nice.  Unfortunately, due to time constraints there were no more stops.  This was a good thing because the next day, after a camping stop in Sheridan, WY, there was a mountain pass we had to drive over.  It was a good thing we went over early in the morning because it had started snowing over the majority of the pass in the early morning hours.  At one point I was driving over 2 in of packed snow.

Apparently the storm was supposed to accumulate 1 ft of snow that day, so it is a good thing we got out when we did.  The drive on the way down from the pass was very beautiful.  We even saw a moose.  We arrived in cody and did some grocery shopping, and then one more mountain pass (no snow on the road this time, but it was still snowing), a 3 hour drive, and we finally arrived at Tower Ranger station.