You are given a gray canvas, a splayed bristle brush, and two pots of watercolor, olive drab and dessert sand. Your assignment, paint a landscape. Whatever you come up with will certainly capture the essence of the view as one drives I-80 through south western Wyoming.
Long rolling valleys are bordered by wrinkled looking, clay colored bluffs. Yellow-gray arid-land prairie grasses blanket vast expanses on both side of the road. Sage brush appears as greenish-gray splotches in those blankets or dense thickets. Patches of bare earth provide the substance for towering dust devils that color the sky gray-brown. As you look across the plains the muted colors leave shapes indistinct. The constant movement of prairie grass in the wind blurs the lines even further.
I don’t think I would call this area beautiful but it is amazing in its shear size. Seeing it drives home exactly how vast this country is.