The Red Desert

1121 August 30, 2024 The Red Desert

I started my day with a walk from the campground, through an old industrial area, and down a country lane.

We packed clothes and food for an overnight Jeep adventure. We left Lander at 10am. We drove 40 miles south on 28 and then entered the Great Northern Red Desert and the Great Divide Basin. This is a 9,000 square mile parcel of BLM land. It is the largest high-altitude desert in the US. It is the largest unfenced area in the country. Wyoming is the 10^th biggest state. 48% of Wyoming is public land. 6 people per square mile live here. We drove another 40 miles into this expansive, remote, wilderness. We saw one other car and two dirt bikes.

We saw pronghorns.

We saw a few prairie dogs.

We saw wild horses.

We saw a coyote running on the road, away from us. He was much too quick for pictures.

We were looking for sand dunes. It was so smoky and hazy that we couldn’t see very far and we never found the dunes.

There were some green areas where springs provide water for wildlife.

We did stop a lot to look at the scenery.

I am quite sure that this place looks very different when the sky is blue and the visibility is better. This is the radar pictures of the haze above the desert.

It took us awhile to find a nice free dispersed campsite. We finally found a perfect spot. We sat up on a ridge at 7,200 feet of elevation and we could look down into the valley below on both sides. The weather was gorgeous. There was a slight breeze. It was 79 degrees and there was 12% humidity.

We could see wild horses in the distance. We set up camp and sat in our chairs to watch them. They began to move toward us, past our road and out into the wilderness.

We were in the Great Divide Basin. This is a depression where the Continental Divide separates and then comes back together again. The moisture that gathers in this area doesn’t go to the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Eons ago, this was a sea. Fossil hunters have found the remains of crocodiles and other ancient sea life.

The Shoshone Indians called this place by two names; “the place where God ran out of mountains,” and “land of many ponies.”

It would be easy to get lost out here. We were thankful that we had a great map form the BLM office. Cell service was intermittent.

There is evidence of civilization out here; remnants of wooden fences, barbed wire, 6” nails, and corrals. People have attempted to live and raise cattle out here but the terrain is too rugged for ranching…though pronghorns, deer, and horses certainly seem to thrive.