Starting the Journey Home

This morning, we said goodbye to our friends, old and new. Below is the motley crewe with whom we spent the week at the Ring Lake Ranch:

I will confess that living rustic is just not my thing. In addition to bugs crawling on my arms at night and moths flying onto my iPad as I read with the lights off (if that doesn't make you jump, I'm not sure what will), there was no air conditioning, dust and dirt everywhere from the wind blowing through the open windows, and rats living in the crawl spaces of the cabins. And we could smell their pee in our cabin. Luckily, I learned about that (their living in the crawl spaces) just the day before we left so that there was only one night during which I thought, as I went to the bathroom at whatever time, "Please don't let my feet touch anything other than the floor. Please don't let my feet touch anything other than the floor. Please don't let my feet touch anything other than the floor." Of course, last night was the night that I had to pee more than once. It was traumatic. I did notice the smell before I found out about the source, but I figured it was just some weird resin smell from the wood. What the hell do I know? Clearly, I do not know much. 

So. Back to leaving.  The drive to Jackson was uneventful, as was the drive out of Jackson. We made a stop at The Bunnery for things to eat as we travelled (lest we starve) and hit the road west. After being in the Wind River Range and the Tetons, the drive southwest was rather dreary. But we did see this stretch of land that had bare, dead trees for a while:

We listened to Longmire and Dan drove and drove... and we finally got to Rawlins, WY. YEE-HAW! I will share this info from Wikipedia:

• Rawlins used to be the northernmost border of the Republic of Texas.
• It is at 6,834 feet and has a population of 8,221. (SA-LUTE!)
• The Wyoming State Penitentiary is located here. I do not know if their population is part of the census. 
• They have a lovely Fairfield Inn by Marriot in which we are staying. So far, there are no bugs that I see or rat pee that I smell.
• They have a big, red sumo wrestler in front of the Japanese restaurant where we had dinner and, of course, Dan had to have his photo taken. Is it the world's largest red sumo wrestler? 

Lastly, on the way to the hotel, we saw a huge and beautiful double rainbow.