The Rockies: Oh, the Horror!

This series of posts wouldn’t be complete without me complaining at least once. So here goes.

I didn’t fully appreciate how clean Colorado is until we crossed the border into Utah. And Wyoming is worse. Every roadside and every rest stop is trashed. When we got down from the RV, we immediately had to watch where we walked, to avoid all the broken glass, and I regularly picked up trash that was in the way of a good picture. And all this despite the steep fines for littering.

And don’t tell me, Wyomingans, that it must be truckdrivers from out of state that do all the trashing, because those trucks also drive through Colorado. No, people in Wyoming either don’t feel the same pride in the natural beauty of their state that people in Colorado do, or else it’s that the sheer vastness of the state allows them to think that their bit of trash won’t make a difference. Well, as a tourist I can tell you it does. It definitely adds up. Shame on you.

So the litter everywhere was kind of shocking. But not as shocking as what I found at a wildlife viewing area. I didn’t know what kind of wildlife to expect, so while I was scanning the middle distance for pronghorn antelope or birds of some sort, I almost stumbled over this.

Okay, so there was a dead coyote in the desert. Big deal, right? But then I saw this a few feet further along.

It was a coyote massacre.

There must have been at least ten to twelve dead coyotes, their bones and clumps of fur scattered all over the place. Empty beer bottles in one spot suggested that this was the work of some drunk yahoos. Ugh!