Finding the Wyoming Sahara

My first few days in Bairoil were open for exploration. :) Not exploration where people go out and taste the best restaurants and see the top of the line museums. Rather, a little . . .  land exploration, which is my favorite kind. Tim and I, took his Jeep out on some of the BLM (Bureau of Land Management - aka Government Land) roads and went exploring. Earlier that summer Tim had found some sand dunes when cruising around and decided to take me out to see them.

In Wyoming or the west in general, there is a lot of sand. Most people don't actually realize how sandy it actually is; even in Colorado. Some places there is actual dunes, rather purely sandy soil. The hidden Wyoming dunes that we found, actually move. The oil service companies have actually lost entire oil wells in some places. They will go check an oil well one month and go out a few months later and cannot find it.

If you think about it, the fact that they move is actually pretty awesome. Not only is the landscape is never the same twice, but it changes often enough that the fact that it is changing is more apparent. Usually, I tend to think that changes happen over a longer period of time, but in the case of these dunes, that is not the case.

Once we found the dunes, Tim wasted no time in climbing one of the largest ones. Over the sand and though the sage brush we went. For those that don't know, sage brush is not always what someone would call a "small" bush. The farther from the road you go, many of the bushes get larger. Some are about 4 to 5 feet tall.

At the top, there was pure packed sand and a view for miles.

                                             

After sitting at the top admiring the view, and then writing words in the sand with the Jeep, the wind came up and we were caught in the start of a storm. Being pelted with sand is definately not the best feeling in the world. Therefore, we attempted to beat the storm and headed back to Bairoil.