Thursday, May 2
We ended up getting out a day later than we had originally
planned because the weather was a little ugly leaving Utah and getting into
Cheyenne, Wyoming. We left on a good day – nice temperatures, clear skies, and
all of us were feeling good.
The few people we talked to that had been to Cheyenne didn’t
have much good to say about it. What we had looked up about the city also
seemed consistent with their judgments, but still, we were exciting for our
cross country trek. The landscape was mostly pretty boring, but we still really
enjoyed it because it was all new to us. I had never been out that direction
and Amy hadn’t travelled that way either, so we took it all in. Snow was still
very much present, and as we arrived in Cheyenne, the city was very much still
in winter.
The first thing we wanted to see were the painted cowboy
boot statues around town since that was all we had really heard about Cheyenne.
That determination of ours ended up taking us over to downtown Cheyenne near
the train museum. We took some pictures and video and then decided to pop into
the Wrangler store just because the building looked kind of interesting and it
was someplace warm.
The store turned out to be amazing and really turned us onto
Cheyenne. It was filled with cowboy-ware; big expensive belt buckles, a huge
display of cowboy/cowgirl boots and even little cowpolk boots, and other such
things. The highlight of the store was talking to one of the workers. He was
the perfect representation of a modern day cowboy stereotype. He had the cowboy
drawl, showed us the residual damage of an injury he sustained while
participating in a rodeo, and topped off with his ghost stories about the local
area. We just loved him. He was the exact right person to talk to if you wanted
a fledgling interest to grow into a full-blown one for Cheyenne. On his
recommendation we ended up heading over to Pioneer Park and saw the stadium
that served as the site where Lane Frost (of the movie 8 seconds) died in the
arena and where a statue was dedicated to him. He also suggested we head over
to try some bison meat and see the “Big Boy” locomotive that is on display.
The best obviously was his telling about the ghost of Tom
Horn that haunts the Wrangler store because that building was formerly the
holding area where condemned prisoners spent their last days and hours.
Additionally, the bride ghost also walked those halls and our cowboy salesman
shared with us that he had observed some of the paranormal activity he had
seen. If we had any doubt, then his brother with the sixth sense had verified
it with him one time when he wanted to see what kind of spirits resided in that
building. I just loved that guy.
My favorite thing about Cheyenne is that it really is such
frontier territory. Apparently with the execution of Tom Horn, that served as
the end marker of the frontier days in the West and the United States, but the
town still has such a great heritage of cowboy culture that it hangs onto, most
obviously with the boots around town, but also in the annual rodeo that had
made its annual appearance in July, since 1897. Cheyenne was great and I’d
loved to pass through again someday. Definitely the last two weeks of July to hit up that rodeo.
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