Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Brief Stop at Boysen State Park

We left Keyhole State Park and drove 270 miles to Boysen State Park. Now we don't really like driving that far but the weather, wind, was beautiful and so Renita did some wheel time between Casper and the park. She was nervous about about driving through the towns but it was fine and it gave me a much needed rest.
Now one of the reasons we so like to keep our Wyoming residency is because the yearly Wyoming resident state park pass allows us to camp, dry camp, for free with a limit of 14 days per month. As we arrived at Boysen we found that there were only three other campers at Tuff Creek Campground and so we had our choice of spots.
Deciding to stay for two nights we got up the next morning and puttered around the campsite before heading off to fuel up, fish, and even do some rock hounding. Driving into Shoshoni we gasped a bit at the price of diesel, 4.19 a gallon. As I didn't need a lot we paid the price as it would allow us to drive to Rock Springs without worrying about stopping in between.
Our next stop was below the Boysen Dam, inside the state park campgrounds. The sites were all unoccupied and I cast a crank bait a few places in hopes of a walleye or trout but none offered themselves for dinner. I did find several brand new spinners that someone had forgotten along the shore and added them to my collection for grayling in Alaska.
Driving upstream we passed the power plant, where signs were posted warning us not to approach the power plant. We stopped for a picture of the lake and as Renita took more images I spied another sign that warned stopping was forbidden, oops.
Reaching the highway we turned south and stopped along the road, at a place where we had seen a woman picking up rocks. Quickly Renita was out the door and the rocks were in trouble, or at least our clean truck was and before too long she had her hands and pockets full of adventurine and Wyoming bloodstone.
There was also lots of other pretty rocks and anyone with a rock tumbler wouldn't have any problem getting a years supply of stone, in a very short time. As we actually have most of the rock we need, yeah I actually said it, we returned most of our finds to the ridge, keeping a few pieces to scatter at our son's house, (They have ten acres and certainly won't notice a few more rocks, hmm I wonder if Patty is reading this?)
So the weather forecast is for light winds and we head out for more doctors appointments in Rock Springs. We also have some other items to attend to as we ready ourselves for an Alaskan adventure. We are both so excited as we have never seen Russia before and we do plan on passing through Wasilla! Clear skies.

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