We awoke in the Casper East RV Park after an interesting night of sleeping in increments. Due to the park’s unique location, sleeping for periods longer than about 90 minutes at a time is problematic. To the south of us, Interstate 25 is conveniently situated across about 3 lanes of frontage road from the park. I-25 starts down in Las Cruces, NM, and wanders along the east side of the Rockies for about 750 miles, ultimately crapping out into a state highway north of Casper, WY. Many truckers utilize this freeway and their trucks are registered in states where mufflers are optional equipment so they make plenty of noise. Many of those truckers passed by the Casper East RV Park last night.
On the north side of the park are some railroad tracks and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad utilizes these tracks regularly. In order to comply with Federal laws, the dutiful engineers operating the multiple snorting locomotives in each train sound two long blasts, a short blast and another long blast at each grade crossing and our park is situated between two such crossings. There are many other roads that cross the tracks here in Casper, all within earshot. BNSF does not recognize night from day so the trains pass by the park very regularly, around the clock.
After a fitful slumber last night, Peggy and I got up and decided to take a look around Casper. First we elected to head up to Casper Mountain south of the city. The road was paved but steep and quite quickly we had moved from around 5000 foot elevation to 8000 feet. Up on top there were dirt roads that seem to lead nowhere but partway up is a pullout alongside the cliffside road that offers a spectacular view of the Casper area and the Platte River a couple thousand feet below along with an almost endless view of Wyoming prairie beyond.
We drove around a bit before descending back into the city where we took a short tour through Casper’s mostly uninteresting metro area. We noted they have many buildings shaped like wedges, a product of having many streets that intersect at angles other than 90 degrees. They also have a traffic engineering department that has installed many traffic lights at all kinds of intersections regardless of configuration, primarily at places where there is no traffic. We hit a grocery, a liquor store and a fuel station before returning to our sound-enhanced RV park. We are out of here tomorrow on our mostly westward trek.
See Casper. Click the asterisk *