On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

 

Geographic Coordinates with Pictures to Match

The main attraction in the region, the open-pit mining of bituminous coal not far out of town.  Just move the Google Earth map around (to the east of town to digital coordinates 44.297, -105.384) and you can clearly see the dark earth where coal is being excavated.  Mark down those digital coordinates, as well, and add them to your directory of unique places to add to your bucket list.

Now, coal is not sexy or pleasant to handle; and as a fossil fuel is quickly losing favor to renewable energy sources, but it is king in Wyoming and makes the trip to Gillette worth the time. An impressionable observer might also notice long lines of railroad cars filled with freshly mined coal.  Kids will be just as awed as adults in counting 80-90 or more cars in a string of coal cars on the tracks and watching for the movements of the locomotive engines to decide whether they are coming to the coal pits or departing to the power plant customers downstream.  Train watching or car counting never really gets old to those who marvel at such spectacles as they unfold.  People who are similarly attracted to watching airplanes take off and land know precisely what that entails.      

 You will be train spotting, as much as you want around Gillette