Friday, July 13, 2018

Goodbye Colorado (FINALLY) and Hello Wyoming…

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Well we “think” we are finally repaired so it was time to leave Colorado. Before leaving I tried turning the key in the ignition about one HUNDRED times in the RV to see if the gauges worked. Why?  Before repairs it would fail about 1 in 8 tries so seeing no failure in 100 tries I think it may actually be fixed.

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We left the Freightliner dealer and headed north barely crossing onto Wyoming where our first stop was at Terry Bison ranch RV Park.It is a Passport America Park with half off the stay but this park only honors it one night and we wanted to stay two. So one night was 24 and one night 48 and with tax it averaged $39.60 a night… definitely not worth it!!! However we wanted to explore Cheyenne Wyoming so we bit the bullet anyway.

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We hoped to explore the capitol building but alas… it was being refurbished and won't open till mid 2019. After discovering this we wished we had only stayed one night especially given the cost of staying the second night. Oh well.

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The next day we drove into Cheyenne to explore a bit and were somewhat disappointed with the town not taking more advantage of its rich history. We did walk around the town  to explore a bit and ended up at the Depot Plaza where we found a nice little brewery which was a bit different. As we walked in we saw a hostess who said, “you need to see me before going in”. She explained she needed a credit card so that she could give us a special card which would record the number of ounces of beer we consumed.

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Armed with our card we walked in and could see that there were several taps with a chalk board beside it describing the beer and the corresponding tap number. There were several sizes of glasses to grab and once a choice is made, visitors pour their own beer by placing their card above the chosen tap.  While pouring a display showed how many ounces you poured. Voila!  Pretty clever!

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I have seen this for wines before but never beer. It was fun tasting as much as we wanted to taste. We did find a favorite beer which was a Mango IPA and it was very good. We sat at the bar where we noticed a sign with the happy hour specials and half off growlers caught our eye! With the special a 64 ounce growler of our favorite beer would be only $6.00… so we took home two!

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The next day we headed north to a small town called Lingle Wyoming where we found another Passport America Park called Pony Soldier RV Park  It was only $15 per night for full hookups and was a much nicer park than the last one we were at.  It would just be a one night stay and our plan there was to visit several historical sites.

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First up was the Fort Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Fort Laramie WY. What a cool fort it was and although it reminded me of one we visited in Texas, this one had been better restored. We walked around the entire site reading all the historical plaques with great information and also enjoyed the rooms which were reconstructed with period appropriate furniture. Very cool!

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Next we drove over to Guernsey WY to see Register Cliff State Historic Site  What makes this so interesting is that it is “historical graffiti” left on a sandstone cliff from travelers on the Oregon Trail. Lots of cool old graffiti but unfortunately there is modern graffiti competing with it.

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On the way back we stopped at another historical site called the Oregon Trail Ruts also near Guernsey WY. Here there is a trail over to  some “ruts” in the sandstone from wagon travelers frequenting the Oregon trail. So frequent that their wagons dug more than 5 feet into the sandstone. It felt really neat being there “in the moment” realizing so many explorers such as us had passed through this area…

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After two stops we have seen no RV error codes nor had any gauge failures so we feel safe to forge ahead with our plan to visit South Dakota! It sure feels good to be on the road again…..

NOTE: We are now in Lingle Wyoming then later today we move over to Rapid City South Dakota…

5 comments:

  1. Nice to hear that your rv has been fixed finally and you are moving on down the road again. Travel safe.

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  2. Do glad to see those big wheels turning!!

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  3. I was aware of Ft Laramie but didn't realize it had such a big role in the movement west.

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  4. Hope the rv has finally been fixed and the rest of the summer is trouble free. Can't even imagine what it must have been like taking a covered wagon over the Oregon Trail, we've seen the "ruts" in a few places.

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