And it's rugged country. I think about all of it is above 6,000 feet.

it is. I had a traveling sales job and, in the winter, I was spending a lot of time holed up in motels, waiting for the road to open back up after blinding snowstorms.

We drove that road all the time. I recall it being a bit of a nightmare in the days when truckers were less-regulated.

That is one nasty stretch of highway when there's snow, especially with wind, which is most of the time (as my grandfather used to say, not much snow falls in Wyoming but a lot blows through there). With the charge of vehicular homicide, sounds like there was some road rage involved. Unforgiving conditions for that kind of bullshit.

Maybe that's just a BIT overstated. Still, I-80 through Wyoming in the winter is pretty scary.

this took place, it appears it was out on the west side f town which is actually heading up Elk Mtn which is the continental divide. It's always crappy up there, even on a nice summer day. I don't know how many hundred times I've been over that stretch in 15 years running semis across the continent. Lots of wrecks out there in winter especially.

It amazes me that there was someone out there with little to no credentials since the US rules and regs have become so strict over the years, but then this could be yet another negative affect of NAFTA - I know that in the southern border states there are tons of problems with Mexican drivers with sketchy equipment and skills allowed over the border. Was very strictly regulated before NAFTA, I was glad I retired right at the beginning of that, wasn't fond of sharing the road with foreign drivers who didn't have to operate by the same rules... that have changed since but I doubt it. The gov't said that wasn't what would happen but it IS what happened on the ground back in the 90s.

It also sounds like the traffic was rerouted through Medicine Bow, US Hwy 30 which was the only road through there before the Interstate was built. Anybody with experience running that stretch knows to go through Medicine Bow when the weather sucks on Elk Mtn. which is the old and current RR corridor.

Too bad, It's a bad place to have a wreck any day of the year.

out where they have big ol' gates they can drop across the interstate (only time I have ever seen that) during periods of high wind. It's been a few years since I've been through there but the last time--June 2011?--there were 3 semis in the ditch.

from the picture it's too wide open for east of town because Sherman Pass is right there and you wouldn't see anything but the side of the mountain unless you were already up on top and you'd have to be on Snowy Range Road or headed south on US287 for it to look anything similar. It's been a while since I've been out that way but that scenery doesn't change, and I've seen it too many times over the past thirty years to not recognize it. I won't venture to guess as to just what mile marker it is but I would probably be close if I did.

As for the gates, they were first used in Wyoming and they were there back in the 1970s that I recall. Even went through one on the western end of the state (between Evanston and The Sisters-heading east toward Rock Springs) while the state trooper stood there waving as he closed them behind me in a snowstorm... those were the days I tell ya. I've had flat tires out there, had my fuel gel up and shut me down when it was something like -50F in the middle of the night... so cold you could see the antelope huddling on the hillside trying to keep warm. And I've seen cool stuff like mustangs and ealges right near the road... but the wind is forever.

I don't remember the gates on the western side: driving between Colorado and Idaho I'd usually get onto US 30 just west of Little America. Driving that stretch of interstate was always my least favorite, but the smaller highways were through areas of austere beauty...now dotted with about a zillion drilling sites. I haven't been back to that part of the country for several years now and I doubt if I will ever go: between the fracking and drilling and devastation due to climate change I find it heart-breaking....

That area is way east of me but I'm only a couple miles from the western state line, can see it out my window. I was really disappointed the last time I was out that way, must have been at least fifteen years ago, Wamsutter was all built up and so was Westvaco Road, Green River, even Point of Rocks was big... sad really. I could see it coming back then, I just didn't realize that it would grow so large. It's pretty much all lights in the desert all over the western front now around Cody and up into Montana. Come to think of it, I was on a brief road trip about five years ago, went down through Jackson and the Wind River IR, Rawlins and into western Colorado as far as Grand Mesa to Grand Junction and came back up on US 191 to Jackson and jumped to Idaho side and north. It was still beautiful landscape but way too many oil fields. At least Flaming Gorge was somewhat the same. But western CO on the mesa was in the process of being pillaged by natural gas.

I camped at Echo Park in Dinosaur and encountered an old couple who had a horse ranch in that area of the Grand Mesa I had been in earlier that day. They lamented how much the gas industry had damaged the place, I had passed right by their ranch and it was pretty nastied up by the network. They were really nice folks too. That campground is 18 miles down a rough canyon and range from the paved road and I was about out of water. Being late in the season the campground was still open but the water was shut off, they shared with me.

I did get to see a few small groups of mustangs between Flaming Gorge and Pinedale, that was cool. I don't get out of my area much anymore and I kind of miss those sorts of things that let you know you are far from the cities and all the traffic like mustangs and endless scenery as far as you can see, and the geologic changes you go through in a day.

Now I live near touristville and the season is kicking up like a sudden windstorm on the prairie. It's not looking pretty already, gonna be a long summer this year, gas prices are down so people can afford to go on the road. Glad I don't have anywhere to go this year.

Instead of running home to the Los Angeles area, I ran another there and back load to eastern PA from Chicago, otherwise I would have took a homeward bound load which would have put me in the area in that time frame.

That stretch between roughly Elk Mountain to Laramie is one of the worst in the nation, due to Wyoming's weather, and heavy 18 wheeler traffic. Another poster pointed out Mexican, and or NAFTA drivers, but I was nearly killed in that area last March by a dumbass that nearly took out my truck and one other while passing us at the crest of the last summit, before dropping towards Laramie from the west.

The dipshit's truck was sporting NASCAR and Confederate flag stickers, and tried to pass another truck that had the center lane on his left side (the so called Hammer Lane) which was covered in snow and ice. The summits have an extra truck slow lanes which because of my heavy load I occupied, the driver in the middle had just moved pass me and I had watched the idiot approach us quickly in my mirrors.

Instead of slowing he veered into the far left ice covered lane and his trailer immediately jackknifed to the right covering most of the middle lane as his tractor pulled even with the truck in the middle lane. We all held our breath as his trailer swung back behind him and somehow did not make contact. I radioed him letting him know the reason his trailer got sideways was because he was an amateur and an idiot, his reply back was "Fuck you and your Mammie", followed by a redneck Ye-Haw.

It ain't supposed NAFTA drivers that are the danger, it is idiots that think they are NASCAR drivers that pose the more likely danger.

I have. Fifteen years on the road, you don't miss much when it comes to the types of drivers that can easily be Darwin Award candidates. A great number of them should never be allowed behind the wheel. I mentioned NAFTA drivers but I also agree with you about the low hanging caliber of so many of our fifth grade dropout types out there tearin' it up thinking that their ignorance won't catch up to them. All the guys like that who I ever knew ended up in the morgue far from home, and then there were the victims of these imbeciles who suffered the same fate because they were in the wrong place at the time the idiot got theirs.

Back in the day we called them show-offs and "ricky-racers" and a few other things I won't repeat in polite company.