Boysen State Park, Wyoming.

This is an example of one of the numerous privies at Boysen State Park in Fremont County on US Highway 20 (Wyoming Highway 789). 

While these actually service the state park, they're right off the road, which in this case, was a good thing, as I was really sick when I took these photographs.

 Clean and well kept.

State of Wyoming Rest Stop, Diversion Dam Rest Area.

This much welcome and nicely maintained rest area is between Riverton and Dubois.  It's large, in addition to having the regular WYDOT amenities.

 

Wedding of the Waters

Another Game & Fish facility, this one conveniently just after you pass through Wind River Canyon between Shoshoni and Thermopolis.  A good location, and scenic.

Little Outhouse on the Prairie. Walker Jenkins Lake

These are the facilities at Walker Jenkins Lake, a fishing hole that was, originally, an open pit Uranium Mine.

We'll let you ponder that for a second.

 Fairly typical rural facilities for Wyoming, and a nice example.

State of Wyoming Rest Stop: Shirley Rim Rest Area.

I should really have started this blog with this entry, as more than any other Wyoming rest stop, it's the one I've stopped at the most.

The Shirley Rim Rest Area.

An archetypical example of the Wyoming solar rest stop, this station is located near Mile Marker 45 on Highway 487, just after, or before, the spot where the highway junction with the old Highway 77 is located.  It's located on the Casper side of Shirley Rim, on the road to Medicine Bow.

Resident of the rest area.

Because of its location, it's a heavily used rest station, as it's on the route to, or from, Laramie.  Having said that, its location is, in my view, a bit badly placed, as It's quite near Casper, if traveling in towards Laramie, or Saratoga, and quite far from those locations if traveling in the other direction.  Frankly, locating it near or in the town of Medicine Bow would have made more sense.  Indeed, in the summer months, if I need to stop, I'll actually tend to stop at the baseball fields in Medicine Bow, which have facilities, or in Rock River, which isn't far down the road.

It's a small, but typical, rest area of this type.  The Wyoming Wildlife sign has suffered from the elements heavily over the years, and the weather in this area is frequently bad.  Isolated when first built, and largely still pretty isolated, a small village now exists across the highway from it, housing Wyoming Department of Transportation crews who keep the highways open, or try to.

In that sense, this is one of the more rustic, in terms of atmosphere, Wyoming rest areas.  It has picnic benches and the like, but I never see them actually used.  It's old enough that I can recall it having a pay phone, and there was an area rancher who had never had a phone put in at his headquarters as late as the 1990s, who used the phone at the station if he needed to.

State of Wyoming Rest Stop, Sheridan Wyoming.

One of the nicest of the WTDOT rest stops, it has a great geologic and archeological display inside, and attendants who have tourist information.  It's clean, and hte back side of it has a commanding view of the City of Sheridan.

 

State of Wyoming Rest Stops, Interstate 80, between Wamsutter and Rock Springs, Wyoming.

This actually depicts two WYDOT rest stops, the two probably being the two busiest in the state.  They're on a long stretch of Interstate 80.  Offhand, I think these are the first rest stops, going west, since the one at Ft. Fred Steele.

That's a long ways.

This is two, not one, rest stops, as the highway is divided.  The two rest stops are likely 1/4 mile distant from each other, on opposite sides of the highway.

They aren't in a scenic location, which no doubt is besides the point. Dedicated to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Highway, they're on part of the path of the old Lincoln Highway and near the Union Pacific Railroad's location.  In some ways, they're the closest thing a modern traveler will experience to the old stage stop.  No food, of course, but a place to briefly stop in the middle, more or less, of Wyoming's Red Desert.

Indeed, on the day I took these photos, a traveler from out of state was taking his horses out of his horse trailer for a break.