Re-Entry Not Going Well

We spent last night at a Hampton Inn in Cheyenne. We're only 1.5 hours from Denver's airport and we figured it would make more sense to have a hotel room than a campground on our last night.

On the drive here from GTNP we passed through Lander, WY (pop 960). Scott saw traffic lights for the first time in nearly a week. Even had to stop at a couple of them . . .

The Hampton Inn is not sited well (perpendicular to the major highway, guys, perpendicular). It's noisy. The mattress was too hard. Scott woke up in the middle of the night and thought he was in a giant tent.

Plane leaves at 2 MT, we'll be home around 11 PM ET.

While You Were Out

Signal Mountain Campground has its share of wildlife. It’s not uncommon for animals to wander close – or even in – to vacant campsites. Our first two days we saw a mule deer in the site next to ours. On day 2, it stuck around for quite a while (the site still a couple of hours from hosting its next occupants) nibbling trees and making its way slowly toward the lake. When the nice couple from Colorado arrived we told them about the visitor. That evening about 9 we returned from watching an otter swim through Oxbow Bend only to be told by the nice couple from Iowa across the way that we’d missed two bears “tramping around by the lake” behind our campsite. Apparently, our picnic table was used by the gawking humans to get a better angle. If we hadn’t seen three bears already on this trip, we’d have been bitterly disappointed.

Speed Limit 45

The general speed limit here is 45 MPH. That's a bit high, though, as during the daytime, you've got views like this to gawk at:

And at night, we're constantly reminded by rangers that the park averages 1-2 "big animal" deaths per day during summer due to car collisions.

Indeed, we've named one section of the trip from the Coulter Bay amphitheater to Signal Mountain "the elk run" as we've had to stop for the large creatures in the road each night so far.