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This gravel road loop through the foothills of the Wind River Range is popular with all kinds of travelers: drivers, ATVers, I even say 5 gravel bikers. They were busy getting ready for a race tomorrow, that includes this road.

The beauty in this loop lies in its carefreeness. It is not so empty that you have to worry dying of exposure if anything bad happens. Yet it is not so busy, that traffic is a problem. The scenery is pleasant and peaceful forest. There are also a few moments of uniquely Wyoming scenery on the north side.

1.START-END SOUTH:jct WY28 - US278 2.lower jct with Red Canyon Rd 3.upper jct with Red Canyon Rd 4.profile turns right onto FR300 Louis Canyon Rd, immediately before summit of South Pass 5.Louis Lake with cabins 6.Fiddler Lake 7.TOP, 9570ft 8.Frye Lake 9.START-END NORTH:jct with Main Street in Lander

Approaches

From South. The profile includes most of the approach of Wy28 to historic old South Pass. The turnoff is at the second bump in the road, that I bet anybody riding up here for the first time would mistake as the summit, and that also goes for the first bump in the road. Wy28 has one more bump to go before it gets to the actual summit of South Pass.

So now we are turning off Wy28 onto Louis Lake Road. A walk in campground at the junction seems to be closed. Instead there is a large parking lot. The first several miles of this road are very busy with campers and hunters and ATVs. Then traffic thins out slowly. These high elevation needle forests, separated by expansive meadows and craggy outcrops parade by the side of the road, and this is also a great escape from the heat. The road just seems to roll along, slowly gaining a 100ft or so in each step to the next meadow.

At the first large lake, there is an official national forest resort of old huts, in close proximity of a lake shimmering dark blue. I keep wondering when that monumental downhill will start back down to Lander, but there still is quite a distance to roll along. When the road crosses the Popo Agie River it is just a peaceful creek through the woods up here. Hard to believe, that yesterday, just a few miles further west, it carves the canyon that was the subject of the rugged slow journey on wheels and foot the day before.

When I reach Fiddler Lake I cannot wait any longer with lunch, because this is the perfect spot. It is not so much spectacular as it is peaceful, with that subdued distant lip of high mountains behind that dark blue wavy surface. Best lunch spot imaginable for today, with the high peaks so far away there is no reasonable chance for an additional out and back to to reach them today. Just sit by the lake and enjoy the cool sunshine.

This is also fairly close to the summit point on the road - just one more lazy curve to the top. The top is a broad but well defined saddle in the trees. A sign labels the elevation (9574ft?), and calls the spot the Blue Mountain Historic Trail.

From North. (described downwards) This side has a different character and the profile is a dead give-away for this.
Rather than rolling from one wooded knoll to the next, the road has now crossed over into wedge country - the straight sage covered cliffs, that gently but resolutely finish off the Wind River Range in a set of ramps on the east side. This is a more geometrically pleasing landscape, more surrealistic too. Still the road traverses between the two faces of the Wind River Mountains. One or two far views reach to rugged peaks, where the range crests. But peeks into that peaks landscape are far away and rare. Then a fast descent gets only faster, when the road hits pavement, still 16 miles before Lander. The sage covered wedges in the landscape congregate to form gates, and the road responds with a flurry of switchbacks before it passes through them - with a total of several times the degrees of curvature than the rest of the loop combined. When the road enters Sinks State Park, the wide lazy streets of Lander are not far away.