Buffalo Bill, Snow, Rodeo, and Pioneers

We left Denver in the morning and headed to Golden.  There we saw the Buffalo Bill Museum and grave site.  The museum was started by his foster son, and completely covered his life history and accomplishments. There were displays of his costumes and clothing from various times in his life, many artifacts, as well as many of the dime books written about him. We also enjoyed the extensive gift shop!  It started to snow when we left Lookout Mountain but it was just a little bit of snow. 

We headed up to Estes Park to see the Stanley Hotel, a haunted hotel where Steven King got the inspiration to write "The Shining", and the Rocky Mountain National Park to spend the night.  We were hit with a hail storm on the way, and then some more snow.  As we got up into the mountains the snow became heavier and heavier, and the temperature was dropping.  When it hit 30 outside, the snow was starting to stick, and it looked more like a blizzard, so we changed our plans and headed down the mountain.  We were disappointed, but didn't want to camp in that much snow anyway.  So we headed to Cheyenne for the night. The one positive note about being up in the mountains was, we saw a herd of elk grazing by the side of the road!

When we woke up in the morning, we had a dusting of snow on us.  But it was much better than the several inches the mountains received!  We headed to the Frontier Days Old West Museum at the Fairgrounds.  This museum had a wonderful collection of lots of carriages.  There were many different kinds beautifully restored.  They also had a display of their Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, an annual event that attracts thousands every year.  They had a display for every event in the rodeo, as well as Miss Frontier.

We took a driving tour of the old downtown area, and saw the State Capitol too.  What a historic old town it was.  I didn't realize that this was where Doc Holiday was from, or that he was a dentist, although he didn't practice dentistry here. 

After that we headed to Guernsey State Park.  This was a great park, with a beautiful view of the lake from a castle of rocks built by the CCC.  We had fun exploring here.

Then we headed to see more Oregon Trail ruts.  We were able to walk in the ruts of the wagons as the pioneers and wagons did over the sandstone cliffs.  These ruts were 3 to 4 feet deep in places. 

Next we went to Register Cliffs to see where people had carved their names while traveling on the Oregon, California, Mormon, and Pony Express Trails.  There were literally thousands of carvings!  Many of the carvings were from more recent years, but it was interesting to see all the names and dates.

From there, we headed to Douglas.  We spent the night camped alongside the North Platte River.  It was a pleasant sight to wake up to.  The morning sun behind us, the slurping of the flowing river beside us, the birds chirping in the bare trees, and the Canadian geese honking.  I imagined what it must have been like for the early pioneers who also camped along this river.  I wanted to put my feet in the river, but it was much too cold!  The weather that day was warming up to 67, but the wind was chilly and strong. Wyoming has some very strong winds.

We visited the Wyoming Pioneer Memorial Museum.  We spent a long time there.  The museum is two stories of collections of every moment from the 1850s to the present.  They had pioneer artifacts, clothing, carriages, weapons, military uniforms, War memorabilia from all the wars, china, political buttons from every election, household appliances, you name it, it was there! 

From there we said goodbye to Wyoming for now, and headed to Nebraska to spend the night.