June 25, Day 3 Roadtrip 2024: Ranchester, WY to Estes Park, CO

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The high plains of Wyoming were our original destination for Roadtrip 2024. However, since we had ticked them in southern Texas earlier this year, we mostly just drove through what looked like lots of good habitat, especially between Casper and Laramie.

National Historical Trails Interpretive Center (NHTIC), Casper, WY

The NHYIC lies on the spot where the immigrant trails crossed the Casper area. What an amazing place? Warning: you’ll drop a bundle at the gift shop. The NHITC was not on our original list, but it was easy to follow the signs and made a good mid-day break. We were impressed with it’s size, the number of volunteer hosts available, the work that must have gone into the design and construction of the displays, and the amount of presented information.

Lincoln Highway, US Highway 30

From Caspar we left I-25 to drop south and picked up US-30 to the northwest of Laramie. From there we followed the historic Lincoln Highway to where it aligned with I-80 as far as the Summit Rest Area and the memorial to the historic highway. The rather awkward presentation of the head of Abraham Lincoln, which commemorates the highway, was moved the short distance to the rest area from its original location on the former route of the Lincoln highway.

This stretch of the Lincoln highway has special meaning because it was a portion of the route Lorna and her family took when they moved from Cleveland out to Vancouver, WA when she was ten.

Outflow from a thunderstorm kept the hair in our faces. We would experience the threat of severe storms over the next five days.
Memorial to the Henry Joy who was behind the transcontinental highway. The L marker with medallion is similar to such markers the length of the highway across the US. We photographed one in northeastern Nevada on our Roadtrip 2022.

In our next post, we’ll describe our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park…