After leaving Jackson, Wyoming I headed north past the Grand Teton mountain range to the little town of Moran. There I took Route 287 southeast through western Wyoming down to the little town of Rawlins, along Interstate 80, where I got a motel room for the night. I intended to get to an Airbnb in Laramie, Wyoming where I had a reservation but for various reasons I didn’t make it that far (my first no-show in 2 1/2 years) and I let the host know by e-mail not to expect me. We had been exchanging messages throughout the day about my increasingly late ETA. I stopped by the house in Laramie the next day to apologize in person.
The northernmost part of Route 287 was on my list as a preferred scenic road but let me tell you, it was pretty awesome all the way to Rawlins (well, until it got too dark to see how awesome it was).
As you can see from many of the photos, a storm system was in the area (fortunately is was moving away from me). As I was nearing the split where Route 287 would branch off from Route 26 I saw this curious atmospheric phenomena. As the sky lightened after the storm had passed, a light colored cloud reached towards the ground. This cloud was quite far ahead of me so it had to have been very large. Rainbow-like colors, the full spectrum from red to violet (remember Roy G Biv?), appeared in this cloud. I have seen it once since then, but the one I saw this day was a first for me. There was no conventional rainbow, just the wide cloud which was reflecting colors from the setting sun. It was really cool.
And right before the sun was about set I saw these little guys when I stopped at a rest area.
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