At the north end of the canyon is Thermopolis, home to the world’ s largest mineral hot spring, where I stay in the rider- friendly Roundtop Mountain Motel. An excellent Mexican dinner and giant margarita downtown at Las Fuentes ends the day nicely.
Day 5 is a restful tourist day. First, a tour of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, a large nondescript metal barn
U. S. Route 20 tunnels through solid rock in Wyoming’ s Wind River Canyon. that is delightfully full of bones and beasts, all arranged chronologically starting when Wyoming was a seabed. After lunch, I lounge in one of the commercial hot springs facilities and recharge the muscles and the mind. Predinner is a walk through Hot Springs State Park, an otherworldly landscape of bubbling mineral formations. Be sure to cross the swinging suspension bridge and see where the boiling sulfurous springs join the Bighorn River, and the unexpectedly free bathhouse is quite nice.
Day 6 means it’ s time to head home, but not before a couple of canyon dives and one last dinosaur hunt. I get back on U. S. 20 and head north for an hour to Greybull, where I turn east on to U. S. Route 14. Just about 8 miles east is a south turnout for an unpaved byway to the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite. The byway is about 5 miles of good gravel that’ s rideable on a streetbike if there hasn’ t been recent rain. The site is amazing, a quarter- mile swath of limestone with thousands of Middle Jurassic footprints that you can walk among and compare foot sizes. I have the landscape to myself and can easily picture a plodding train of Theropods wandering down the draw.
26 / JULY 2026 / RIDERMAGAZINE. COM