Wyoming to South Dakota

Before we left Yellowstone, Emmett got his Junior Ranger Badge. It was 8:30 in the morning and not at all busy at the Fishing Bridge Visitor Center so the Ranger who awarded Emmett his badge did so with a special little ceremony, gaining the attention of the 3-4 other early morning visitors before crowning Emmett with his own ranger hat and then bestowing upon him the Junior Ranger badge (and a proper little sew-on badge it was; there are no plastic badges at the granddaddy of all national parks).
We climbed for hours up and over the Bighorn Mountains reaching an altitude of 9,033 feet at Granite Pass. So high were we that we found ourselves driving among the clouds. On our way down off the mountain, cows wandered just beside and sometimes on the highway in an open range area. We did a 180 when James spotted a young moose along the road. We found him munching on some plants along side the road and were very pleased with our find. We needn’t have patted ourselves on the backs too heartily. A few hundred yards along the road, we saw several more moose (these ones with great horns on them) also engaged in a mid-afternoon snack. They looked quite “majestic” as Ben put it with their big, velvety horns. We drove through small towns like ‘Shell’ where the population is just 50 and had to wonder, just how frequently are they having to change those signs? A few hours into our journey, we hit I-90 that runs clear across the country to Boston. We’ll stop off in South Dakota tonight though and try to get a glimpse of Mt. Rushmore. Tomorrow, we’ll hit Bear Country and the town of Keystone. We’re just now having a debate about whether or not Keystone Beer is brewed in Keystone, South Dakota. If it is, we’ll just have to have one won’t we? There’s that whole commitment we made prior to embarking on this trip to eat ‘local’....