Well we got two out of three from the title today, the third comes tomorrow. We woke up this morning and thought that the world had come to end —– there was blue sky with a large yellow orb!
After breakfast we headed down to Hill City train station to catch the steam train for a return trip to Keystone. The railway was built in the late 1800’s to serve the tin and gold mining communities.
For those interested (John B) the engine was a 2-6-6-2T articulated Mallet, the only one of its kind in operation worldwide. Each trip requires 2000 gallons of water and 200 gals of used motor oil.
Below are pictures of the trip
Just Add Water 
On Our Way
Blowing off Steam
The picture above show clouds of steam coming from the engine, once a trip the steam pressure is diverted into the boiler pipes to clear out minerals deposited from the water, the steam is then vented to the air.
Keystone Station
Keystone Main St.
View Through the Carriages
Rock Formations
View of the Train
We left the train station and headed towards our next stop Rawlins Wyoming. This was just a stopping place for the night with no activities planned. Leaving Hill City was a great drive through twist mountainous roads, but very shortly we ended up in the high plains with miles and miles of nothing, including cell signal. This area is not recommended for teens!
Even lunch had to bought at a gas station as there were no restaurants for many miles
As we approached Wyoming we planned to get a picture of the State welcome sign (we needed to relieve the boredom!). Initially it looked as though there wasn’t one so we took the following picture;
Wyoming starts where the road changes colour
We then found a (small) sign
Once in Wyoming the scenery got more mountainous, and we started to climb.
There were rock formations of many colours, the one above was one of the lightest, there were also many shades of red. As you can see it was a sunny day with the temperature climbing to 78F (25C).
Somehow we managed to cross the Continental Divide twice, which would infer we are now going the wrong way, I would have much preferred crossing it an odd number of times. We climbed up to 7300ft before starting a slow descent into Rawlins at 6800ft. Tomorrow is another positioning day, with a stop at an aircraft museum on the (sort of, but not really) way.