Driving Pictures part II
Here are the last few pictures from the drive. Wyoming is a wonderful, weird place, with truly bizarre topography and rapidly changing climates. All of these pictures were taken within 3 hours of each other, on a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 80 near the Utah border.
Pulling into a rest stop, I saw this Gazelle on the side of the road; Lilly was VERY interested in the silent, calculating way of her wolf ancestors. We rolled 200 yards further down the road to the actual rest stop, and I was making a mental note to have a firm grip on Lilly’s leash, when I noticed the MASSIVE prairie dog town next to the rest stop. Lilly went normal dog ballistic this time, seeing all of the chittering faces popping up out of the sage brush, all taunting her in the high pitched & sophisticated language of prairie dog. Getting out of the car would have been an invitation to dog disaster, so I continued on.
Wyoming is insanely windy, and wind farms are as plentiful as hydropower is in the rain soaked east. These things are HUGE
its june, and its snowing, welcome to wyoming!
50 miles later, gorgeous sky
Filed under: on the road
Your “gazelle” is a pronghorn (Antilocapra american), the only American antelope and quite a remarkable animal - see http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/may/papr/pronghorn.html. “the Pronghorn is the fastest animal in the western hemisphere, running in 20-foot bounds at up to 60 miles per hour. Unlike the Cheetah, speedburner of the African plains, the Pronghorn can run for hours at quite a fast pace.” You should know your kindred…
I don’t know how commonly seen they are out there, but surely sightings are much rarer than for our deer.
actually kate, you can see them quite commonly along the fences on the sides of the roads in wyoming… pretty much every time I ever drove 287 or I-80, I have seen them.. I have just never seen a buck this big & bold before, most of them look dog sized.. and scatter if a car slows down… I always wonder how they survive the brutal wyoming winters, the 70mph winds alone ought to blow them away
its true that there are few sightings more common than east coast deer!! or as my mom called them “rats with hooves!!”
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