Gillette to the Canyon: Part One

I left Gillette, Wyoming with no idea what kind of drive I was in for. I’d done parts of this trip before — Buffalo was familiar — but this time I was heading west through the Bighorn Mountains, across the state, through places that don’t announce themselves. They just change the landscape around you.

Buffalo & The Occidental

I didn’t stop in Buffalo this time, but I’ve been there before. Years back, I found myself in the saloon at the Occidental Hotel — the kind of place that doesn’t try to feel old, because it actually is. I had an Old Grand-Dad at the bar, neat, while the floor creaked under me and the bartender made conversation with someone who looked like they might’ve been drinking there since the 1950s.

They’ve got a museum tucked inside too. Not some hokey roadside thing — a legit little collection of frontier history. A dinosaur skull, of all things. And they say there are still bullet holes in the wall from an old shootout. I believe it.

Climbing Into the Big Horns

Leaving Buffalo, the road climbs — slow and steady, winding west into the Bighorns. Off to the right, Cloud Peak towered above the range, still carrying a glacier on its summit. It was July, but there were patches of snow tucked into the shaded slopes at lower elevations.

I pulled over near one. Cracked a beer and sat in the snow — wearing flip-flops, because I thought that was a good idea. It wasn’t. The mosquitos were relentless. I’ve never seen so many on my body at once. They were everywhere — even crawling on the beer can.

I didn’t stick around long.

Western Descent

On the way down the western slope of the Bighorns, the trees began to thin out, and the forest gave way to exposed yellow-beige rock — weathered and dry, like the whole mountainside had been left out in the sun for a thousand years.

The road curved downward, long and steady, and the air felt different. Lighter. Drier. The soft alpine meadows were gone, replaced by open slopes, scattered shrubs, and cliffs rising ahead. The terrain hadn’t turned red yet, but it had clearly left the mountains behind. It felt like the land was shifting — like Wyoming was getting ready to show me something completely different.

Wind River Canyon

South of the mountains, the terrain flattened out. The sky opened up. The road smoothed. Nothing hinted at what was coming.

Then the river came out of the rock.

Like it had cracked the cliff open and spilled through. One moment I was driving through wide open country, and the next I was in Wind River Canyon — cliffs rising around me, the river racing beside me, rail tracks pinned to the canyon wall like they were just barely holding on.

There’s no descent. No warning. You just enter it.

I slowed down without realizing. The canyon walls towered above, stacked with time — like each layer had a story I couldn’t read. The whole place felt old. Heavy. I didn’t take photos — not because it wasn’t worth it, but because it felt like I was passing through something I wasn’t meant to capture. Just witness.

At the far end of the canyon, the road passed a dam — Boysen Dam — and the river opened up into a massive, blue-green reservoir. It was like emerging from a stone corridor into a lake suspended in the sky.

Red Canyon

Further down the road — after the cliffs had fallen back and the reservoir was behind me — I hit a curve that changed everything. The road bent upward and to the right, and suddenly the land just opened.

A valley spread out in front of me, glowing with vivid green grass and carved through with deep red rock. It looked fake. The kind of fake that only reality can pull off. Like a painting, or a dream, or a video game with the saturation cranked too high.

I pulled over. I had to. I took a picture. And when I show it to people now, they think I edited it. I didn’t. That’s just what it looked like. A perfect collision of red earth and green life — like the land couldn’t decide between Mars and Ireland, so it chose both.

I don’t even know what the place is officially called. It wasn’t marked. It doesn’t need to be. It’s just there, waiting, like everything else Wyoming hides in plain sight.