Wyoming

Wyoming is the least populated and least densely populated of the lower 48 states. We are now in Lander, Wyoming, which is close to the center of the state and it seemed we drove through miles and miles of open terrain to get here. We traveled 130 miles from Green River, on the southern border and went through one small town.

Yesterday we visited Sinks Canyon State Park. It is along the canyon of the Popo Agie River (puh-PO-shuh). This beautiful little river carries snowmelt from the Wind River Mountains, which are high enough to support glaciers.

But the most remarkable thing about this river is that the whole thing disappears into a cave with cracks and crevasses (the sinks).

It’s a lot of water, moving fast, and it all just disappears underground. During the spring snowmelt it overwhelms the sinks and part of the water does flow overground.

We were standing at the mouth of the cave when I took this picture. To overflow the water would have to be about 20 feet deeper than it was, hard to imagine.

A quarter mile down the canyon the water re-emerges into this relatively placid pool. Dye studies have shown that the water takes two hours to make this trip. No one knows what the underground portion looks like to make that part of the journey take so long.

The Popo Agie is a trout stream. The pool at the rise is full of Rainbow and Brown Trout whose journey upstream ends at the underground portion of the river. Many of these fish are two feet long or more. I took this photo from a platform about 25 feet above the pool. There is a dispenser for fish food and people feed the trout from the platform, but Bob Alexander, there is no fishing allowed in this section of the river.