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.
