After realizing the largest town in Wyoming was only an hour and a half north, we packed up the dog and headed to Cheyenne, WY.

I did some research first on the tourism web site and it looked like a cute old western town. With a population of 50,000 people I shouldn’t have been surprised at how boring it was. There was a nice Governor’s mansion and the town is apparently a major hub of the Union Pacific Railroad.

I stopped in the tourist information hut to ask the local employee if there was anything cool to see in Wyoming. She told me to drive 4 more hours until I got to Yellowstone. I didn’t exactly have 4 hours so I asked if there was anything cool within an hour of Cheyenne. She thought hard for a moment and advised me to go to a park 30 minutes away. It was her one and only idea so we took it.

The park was pretty nifty, actually. The bumpiest dirt road in the world led us to huge granite formations. I have a hard time imagining how those giant, dull blobs of granite will eventually end up flattened down and sparkly in my gourmet kitchen someday.

Bob found a small dirt trail off the paved path and decided we should follow that for a while. Once we reached a destination Bob was pleased with, we started heading back to the car. I immediately knew it wasn’t the exact direction we came from. Bob said “don’t worry, I’m taking a short cut!”. Mind you, he didn’t have a map or any knowledge of the area and is notorious for having a terrible memory and sense of direction. I was immediately grateful to have Coda’s excellent sniffing abilities so help re-trace our steps if needed. Thank goodness Bob guessed right and his short-cut led us back to the main trail and we were able to get the heck out of boring Wyoming!

On Saturday night Bob and I went to Toad Tavern to listen to Andy McKee. He plays the acoustic guitar, but he uses the entire instrument, not just the strings. He uses the body of the guitar as a drum and comes up with some amazing songs. Click the picture below for a sample of what he does.  Andy is from Kansas, which finally gives me hope that Kansas isn’t the worst state in the country.

Today we went to Roxborough State Park to check out some cool rock formations. Yes, I am aware that I just got really nerdy by saying “cool rock formations”. You’d think that after nearly failing geology in college I wouldn’t care, but these rocks were pretty impressive. There was a short road leading to the main part of the rocks and from there we had to get out and walk. After 5 minutes of walking, Bob’s herniated disk was bothering him so we couldn’t hike on any of the trails to get closer to the rocks. We’ll let him heal for a few weeks and try to check out that park again sometime this spring or summer.

Bob and I went to Vail yesterday, about 2 hours away. It is a small mountain town that relies on tourism and skiing to survive. I immediately fell in love with the atmosphere. The buildings reminded me of being in Lucerne, Switzerland.

We didn’t go skiing or snowboarding this time. Instead, I heard about a free snowshoeing tour that would last an hour so we checked that out. We took a free gondola ride to the top of Lionshead Mountain and the ride seemed endless. This mountain was huuuuge.

We made our way to the nature center on top of the mountain and strapped on our snowshoes, which was extremely complicated. Walking in them wasn’t much easier. Imagine wearing clown shoes that are 10 sizes too big and waddling.

We had a large group for this tour- about 18 people and that included an older lady that couldn’t climb up any incline and had to crawl in the snow, very much like the 4 year old boy in our group. Throughout the tour our guide stopped to point out animal footprints in the snow, like the snowshoe rabbit and other rodents.

At the end of the tour the bottom of my pants were soaked, as were my poor, cold feet so we headed back down the mountain on the gondola. Before we left we stopped by a pizza place for a few slices. Turns out to be the best pizza we have found in Colorado- and go figure, it is 2 hours from our house and they don’t deliver.