Day Six: Great Falls, MT to Casper, WY
Distance: 493 miles
Great Falls didn’t have much to offer in the way of entertainment of sightseeing. When I was booking our hotel the day before, I actually spent an extra 15 bucks to be in a hotel that was downtown, thinking it would be nice to walk around and see the city. “Downtown,” consisted of every fast food restaurant imaginable, a Walmart, and an abandoned car dealership. Womp womp.
We set out on the 8 hour drive to Casper. The scenery wasn’t very exciting, but still beautiful in it’s own way. We passed lots of cows, antelope, and windmills.
This was our longest day of driving thus far, so I expected both of us to feel really cramped by the end of it. We checked in with each other periodically along the way, and we were both surprisingly comfortable the whole time. Even with the snack/hydration station at my feet:
Along the way, Victor called the Acura dealership in Denver and canceled the appointment he made previously to replace the CV boots (to the tune of $1,500, yikes). It had pretty much stopped leaking by now, so he posted to NSX Prime asking if anyone in the Denver area had a jack and jack stands so he could properly clean the boot and repack it with grease.
While he waited for a response on the forum, we listened to lots of podcasts and Latin Top 40 music, and eventually made it to Casper, Wyoming. It was a really neat little town. Actually, Victor just informed me that it’s the second largest city in Wyoming. So it was a really neat little… city. The downtown area was very old and run down in some places, but there seemed to be lots of revitalization happening.
Victor looked up some good places for dinner and we found ourselves in an out-of-the-way Venezuelan spot. The food was amazing, and the owner was one of those people that just radiates happiness. He shook our hands and introduced himself as we walked in and thanked us for choosing his restaurant out of all the other eateries in the area. He walked us through the menu and made excellent recommendations (fried plantains and mini arepas with avocado sauce… yaasss). Throughout our meal he told us about how he used to be an electrical engineer but found the hours too demanding and stressful, and he always dreamed of opening a restaurant. Two years ago he pulled the trigger and hired all his family and now he gets to live his dream. It was great to hear his story and even better to taste his cooking.
After dinner we found a little trail by the river that was perfect for walking off all that food. There were lots of baby bunnies hopping around, and this really cool bridge overpass:
Victor found a map and observed that the trail eventually looped back toward downtown, so we followed it all the way in and walked the streets of Casper until it got dark.
We came across a bottle shop and stopped in to grab something to enjoy back at the hotel. The owner here was super nice too, she introduced us to a group of her girlfriends that were “sampling” wine and keeping her company on the boring Tuesday night. She offered us wine samples and subtly tried to convince me to buy a $25 bottle (lolnope) that she thought we would enjoy, but we absconded with a $14 red blend. Still $4 above my usual price range, but I was feeling indulgent, we’re on vacation after all.
It had been a long and, thankfully, uneventful day. Back at the hotel we enjoyed our wine while watching Youtube videos before resting up for our drive to Denver the following day.
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