June 20th - Cheyenne, Wyoming

As we drove first west and then south from Casper to Cheyenne, the landscape became gradually less arid. We started seeing trees on the ridges and the occasional attempt at raising crops, mostly hay, I think. Once we had found a motel room in Cheyenne we drove to the starting point for the Cheyenne Volksmarch, which was a very large Wrangler Western store in the center of town.

Cheyenne has a population of 53,000 and so in an absolute sense it is a very small capital city. But for Wyoming that has many towns of less than 10 population and the lowest population density of the lower 48 states, it is quite large. We were surprised to find a line waiting for the start box. Not only were we not the first people to do the walk that day, we were the 60th and there were another 40 that signed in while we were on the walk! We were lucky that the folks just ahead of us had just finished the walk and gave us the benefit of where they had lost the trail—if you ever do this walk remember to “turn RIGHT on Carey and proceed for about a mile until you see the old steam locomotive on the right”.

The first curl of the route was 1 block over to the old Union Pacific station, which was a very nice stone block in a turn-of-the-century style. It looked like they were converting it to a mini mall and I certainly hope so because it is too pretty a building to stand idle. Then we traversed the small downtown area and walked a few blocks to the State Capitol building. As you might expect from the small population of Wyoming, the Capitol was modest but had the traditional dome covered with gold leaf—very pretty in the sunlight.

We turned RIGHT on the aforementioned Carey at this point and walked about a mile to the Lions Park (where the aforementioned steam locomotive was located) at the edge of town. It lies just across Carey from the Western Museum where they hold “Frontier Days” for a week or so each July. It seems to include a first-class rodeo and other western events and sounds like a lot of fun. The park included a botanical garden that we stumbled on by accident, and the folks there were busy planting flowers for the summer.

Just as we crossed a small pound and came into view of the old steam locomotive, a thunderstorm started spitting sleet and hail at us. Fortunately there was a nice comfort station there with stone benches under an overhang and heated restrooms. So we had all the comforts of home as we waited out the storm, which fortunately blew itself out in a half-hour or so.

We continued around a small lake and back into town thru nice residential areas, passing several historic buildings that were described on the instructions. One of these was the old Governor’s Mansion, which is now a museum—I occasionally am frustrated that we don’t have the time to see all the interesting museums we are finding on our walks! We zigzagged back downtown and returned to the start finish where we told the next walkers about turning right on Carey. So at least 100 people had exactly the same idea that we did about walking the state capital YRE right before the AVA convention walks—great minds think alike!

That evening we bought some groceries at Wal Mart and also looked at RVs in the parking lot outside a large sporting goods store. We were trying to find one with a good layout for us that had a tow weight of less than 6,000 pounds. Searching around a bit we did find a “Trail-Lite” model of about 22 feet in length that had a gross weight of 5800 pounds and a nice layout with the bedroom in front, dining area in the middle, and bathroom in back. The only drawback was the price of $18,000! So altho that one was out of our price range we were reassured that at least some manufacturers were making models that would fit our needs; we’ll keep looking around back in Virginia to see what we find.

With visions of RVs dancing in my head, I finally got to sleep that night, only to be awakened every couple of hours as the freight trains came rumbling thru. I suppose the people of Cheyenne were used to it, but we both sleep lightly and this really disturbed us. So we were a little groggy the next morning and we’ve often found that a good or poor night’s sleep makes a surprising difference in how much we can enjoy our activities the next day.