My family used to have a little place in the town of Ennis, Montana. We drove up there from Colorado quite a few times over the years, hastily traversing Wyoming on the way. For years I gazed at those mountain ranges across Wyoming and wanted to one day have time to stop and explore them one day. The small towns always got my attention too.
So a few months ago, I was talking with one of my buddies who is always up for an adventure. "Let's hit Wyoming in the 40s this summer".
We made a plan to do a big, [slow] loop in my 1977 and his 1976 FJ40. Since an FJ40 isn't slow enough by itself, I opted to drag my M101 CDN trailer and rooftop tent the whole way.
The original plan was to go in July and take our sons, but both of us had conflicts that came up and we had to push out further. It also didn't help that Wes' rear diff exploded on one of the final prep rides right before our original departure date. Thankfully,
@Texican shipped him a nice low-mileage third member and he was back in business.
For purposes of this trip report, we will start the 1,100-mile route in Laramie, Wyoming, not far across the border from Colorado.
Laramie is a nice little town, home of the U of Wyoming. "Pistol Pete" is their mascot as I recall. It was a good place to gas up, get groceries, and start looking over the map for a camp site for that night. The famous/infamous Buck Horn Bar was closed for inventory, so we headed next door to a corner joint called "Born in a Barn" for some burgers and a couple of local beers.
Joining was Wes and his nice '76, as well as another buddy (we call him "That F*cking Craig", long story) who met us en route and hit part of the trip with us in his yellow FJ Cruiser (you will probably recognize both of these rigs from previous trip reports over the years). A third buddy and absolute wild man from Louisiana, Robbie, joined as a passenger.
We planned a route west onto Wyoming 130 and into the Snowy Range.
WY 
