WARNING: Not a lot happens in this episode. My car almost runs out of gas, but it doesn’t. So that’s kind of anti-climactic, especially now that I spoiled it for you. But there’s laser-dinosaurs at the end!

From the KOA Campground in Douglas, Wyoming I pointed my car west across the emptiness. At least Wyoming has rolling emptiness; the hills had steadily grown since Nebraska, and the first things that you might call “mountains” were in the middle distance. Still, things were so barren and treeless that I frequently passed giant artificial wind breaks (i.e. fences). They could PLANT some trees, you’d think…

West of Casper I made a random stop when I saw some horses chewing grass along the roadside. I want to make some horse-friends, I thought. Those Clif Shot Bloks in my bag would make perfect horsey snacks, I thought.

And so they were, though I saw one of the three nonchalantly spit his out. The other two were more than happy to bicker over who’d had more Shot Bloks. Chill, guys, I’ve got a whole pack of them.

By 2:00 I was convinced Day 3 would be my most blasé of days, accented only by horse-feeding, until I turned the car north from Shoshone and found myself driving down Wind River Canyon.

It was amazing, and (FINALLY) the first real mountainous terrain I’d seen. I curled northward alongside the Bighorn River for about 20 miles, stopping for pictures (or occasionally just pointing the camera out the window).

Finally I came to Thermopolis, and because Kevin can’t resist a good dinosaur museum, Kevin dropped 10 quid on a visit to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. It looks a tad sketchy from the outside, but it’s surprisingly awesome inside, with a 100-foot long mockup of a Supersaurus (yeah that’s a real thing) as its centerpiece. For my friend who requested oddball postcards, I selected one of two adorable little girls in their Easter dresses climbing happily into the mouth of a T-Rex skull.

Also in Thermopolis: Hot Springs State Park, my first of many encounters with random bubbly cauldrons of water being pushed up from the depths of the earth. Pretty cool, but also stinking of sulphur. After a moment’s hesitation I decided NOT to use the state-run bath house.

Instead I partook in one of the oddest tourist rituals I’ve ever partooken in: a visit to Legend Rock, home of thousand-year-old Indian petroglyphs in deepest darkest Wyoming. It’s odd because of how you get admission to the thing: pay a fee, sign a waiver, and they hand you a list of hilariously convoluted directions on how to get there, and a key.

After 20 miles of driving outside of Thermopolis, down the world’s loneliest highway, I turned down the world’s even more loneliest gravel road. ANOTHER seven miles and I was at the gate to the thing; I let myself in, locked the gate behind me, and drove ANOTHER mile to the parking area. Finally I walked 200 more yards until I arrived at a 500-foot cliff face marked up by Indian petroglyphs. They weren’t behind a fence or Plexiglass wall, they were just…there.

After a half-hour of picture-taking I let myself back out, dropping the state-provided key in an iron drop box, and then I was on my way. Here came the most unintentionally exciting part of the day; I learned that my gas gauge likes to drop precipitously in its final third, and I also learned I was 50 miles from the nearest station. So I hypermiled it for a good hour, watching the needle drop below the E line for the first time ever, and wondering morbidly how much farther it could go. When I finally made it to Meeteetse (that’s an actual place), my tank slurped down 11.8 gallons; it holds 12. Woof.

Final stop for the evening was Cody, a very touristy kinda town, where I ate and borrowed Wi-Fi from a local diner as the sun set behind the mountains. Then I toodled another hour north in the darkness, wondering yet again what kind of scenic vistas I was missing around me, only able to guess by the light of a quarter-moon. I reached Red Lodge, the starting point of the Beartooth Highway, supposedly one of the prettiest drives in the country, and my entryway to Yellowstone the following morning.

No energy to set up a tent. I was sleepy. I got to what I roughly guessed was the starting point of the highway, pulled over, and reclined my seat. I was out within five minutes.

PS: I feel guilty about the relatively boring day I had. Here’s some dinosaurs shooting lasers at each other.