Wednesday - Dinosaurs, sharp camper corners

We woke up real early Wednesday morning and left Devils Tower while the kids were still asleep, and didn't wake up for another hour.  We needed gas and the closet station was 60 miles the direction we were going.  At the gas station we were going to get a diet coke, no Pepsi is made in Wyoming.  We had to go to three stations to find diet coke!  I also broke down and let the kids buy snacks cookies, and pop tarts.  I told them this is it we aren't doing that again!(we'll see)  We were driving to Thermopolis, Wy which was about 4.5 hours away.  But you have to drive through the Bighorn Mountains.  It took a lot longer than expected, just with the mountain climb and they were doing construction, crazy construction where they were grading the side of a hill with a bulldozer and it had to be a 50 or 60 angle.  At one point on the descent we pulled over to take pictures and get out and the brakes were burning.  So we stayed there a while and let them cool down.  It was all very pretty but once you got through the mountains it was a desert on the other side.  All rock, sand no dirt and scrub brush. 

The Thermopolis Dinosaur museum was pretty cool, kids enjoyed it.  But Thermopolis has the largest hot springs in the world, so we went to check those out.  They have three swimming pool complexes right next to the mineral spring pools and they use that hot water.  Two pools charge and one is a free state run one.  The state run one looked the nicest but there were mainly older people there and we saw 4 bicycles outside and you could tell they were biking across the state or country, and using this place as a bath!  There was also a van that was full of stuff and Cate said does someone live in there and I was like maybe and he's probably in there too taking a bath.  So we skipped the free state pool.

We skipped swimming Blair was afraid that it was too hot and then Lauren fell out of the overhead bunk above the front seats and really scraped her leg on a sharp edge under the cushion.  The camper doesn't have many sharp corners but I've managed to run into them all with my leg or shoulder.  I have a terrible bruise on my leg from this dumb drawer right by the front passenger seat, which I hit twice.  There are these sharp cabinets right by our head in the bedroom, which I've elbowed. 

The grocery store in town is called Blair's so of course we had to stop, we forgot dish soap.  We went to the camp ground and had a quiet evening.  The campground does tubing down the river but we looked at the river and it was flowing a little too fast with all the rain.  And of course it rained last night but today, Thursday we are on to Yellowstone!