Saturday, September 15, 2012

A Capitol Day!


 Wyoming State Capitol Building

When we were in Cheyenne last May we stayed one night at Terry Bison Ranch, and then moved up to the Sierra Trading Post lot to overnight.  We didn't get the car out, but rode our bikes around the southeast end of town.  This time we decided we were going to drive into Cheyenne to see the State Capitol building and a couple of museums.

We left the park around 10:15 and drove straight to the Capitol building where we found a parking spot right across the street.  I did not realize that Wyoming was the first government in the world to grant women equal rights, and Esther Hobart Morris was the driving force behind that legislation.  Who would have known?  I certainly would never have known had we not made this visit.




Since the Capitol building was not open we walked about half a block over to the Wyoming State Museum.  There are two floors to the museum, and admission is free.  The exhibits that particularly intrigued me were the guns.  I love everything about the old wild west.  Below are some of the hand guns that helped tame the West.



And of course, the Winchester '73, one of the most popular repeating rifles of all time.  What I learned today was that Winchester basically took the Henry Repeater and improved upon its design.  This is probably one of the best gun collections of Western guns I have seen.



They also devoted a large section to dinosaur remains, of which Wyoming has one of the largest deposits found in the world.




Look at the size of that femur!


We spent about an hour and a half at the Wyoming State Museum, and then headed over to Sierra Trading Post to see if we could find any killer deals, but there was nothing that jumped out at us, so we next headed to the local Goodwill store where I finally found a 5 iron to carry while we are taking walks....when we were staying at Rock Creek RV Park we had a few dog incidents which made me wish I had a weapon to defend ourselves.   My preferred iron is the 3, but TLE thought the shaft was too long for her, so she picked out the Wilson 5 iron.  The cost?  .95 cents!



We then headed back to the old town area to visit the Union Pacific train museum housed in the beautifully renovated Cheyenne Train Station, but before we got in the door we noticed the Shadows Pub and Grill in the same building....it was 1pm, and we were hungry so we decided to have lunch first, then take the museum tour.  We both ordered a pint of the Shadows Honey Rye Ale and a 14" Shadow Supreme Pizza.  We enjoyed our lunch al fresco, in fact in the picture below you can just see TLE sitting at our table.  I walked out in front to get a picture of the Pub sign.  She is off to the far right just behind the white SUV.

Shadows Pub & Grill


TLE in front of the train station

The Union Pacific Train Museum cost $5 per person if you qualify as a senior, but even at that price I thought it was a little over priced.  The museum was essentially thousands of pictures of various Union Pacific steam engines and other period pictures of the town, and railroad yard. It was interesting, but not at $10 for the two of us.  As it turned out the serendipitous discovery of the Pub was a better find than the museum!

After a short walk around the old town area we headed back to the car, and back to Terry Bison Ranch for the afternoon.  TLE needed to do a wash, and I needed a nap......lol!

Tomorrow Denver!  Thanks for stopping by!

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