Cheyenne, Wyoming

 August 13, 2020

Wyoming!!  We made it.  We pull into Terry Bison Ranch Resort and get settled in.  These sites are pretty tight, not much room between them, but the ranch is pretty cool.  We only had occasional next door neighbors, so we aren't complaining.

The visitors center is just a block down the highway from the ranch and I had seen a flashing sign that said something about kayaks.  Well, we have some of those, so after we got settled in we went to the visitors center and they told us all watercraft, including kayaks, canoes or paddle boards must be inspected.  Wyoming is one of four states that do not yet have an invasive fresh water mussel in their waters and they want to keep it that way.  Hmmm.  I can assure you there are no mussels on my kayak, but okay.

Then we took a walk around the ranch to stretch our legs as this last leg was little longer than we usually ride.  It took us over 3 hours to get here from Colorado Springs.  This is a working ranch, but they have the huge entertainment aspect to it.  They have trail rides, ATV Tours, Drive In Theater, two restaurants, a gift shop, Old Time Photos and a train ride.

They have Clydesdale horses on the ranch and the huge male, Norman, is the only one who gets the girls here.  There are some huge horses here.  They even have some trick horses and miniature horses they show off after the train ride. They have 3 Camels roaming the prairie, several Llamas, but one is in permanent time out because he is so mean.  He has no social skills - so no socializing for him! They have ostriches (one of them is also in permanent time-out), donkeys, so many goats.  They have two goats currently enormously pregnant with twins!

We watched the master billy goat trying to get a young lady goat to accept his advances for about or 20 minutes.  There was also a young billy goat trying to get some of the same young lady goat.  I took a video, it was hilarious!  But I couldn’t crop it to fit this blog.  Dang it. They were all exhausted! LOL. 

This guy just dances for anybody he sees.  Love his spirit!

There are peacock roaming around.  We saw a momma and her babies. Chickens all over the place and the nicest Turkey.  He likes to be petted.  His name is Tom, or Toby.

We asked about the ATV tour, but it was $80 a piece.  Don't they know we are on a fixed income?  So we opted for the train ride.  It is only $15 a person. It was interesting, they take you out to the Bison herd and you can feed them.  Bison are blind as a bat and their tongues are so rough - like really course sand paper.  I was covered in Bison slobber before we left there.  There was a nursing mother that came out to the train and her baby finally followed her out. Baby needed a snack too.  

 

One of the restaurants here is Senator's Steakhouse and it is really good.  They serve a lot of bison here.  We have tried the ribs (AMAZING), the meatloaf - (it was just meatloaf, but good) and the bison burgers. They also serve fresh pork rinds (SPICY - they season them with blackened seasoning). 

They have a bar as well, the Brass Buffalo Saloon, and we have made some friends there.  Last night the bartender brought Dennis a local beer, on the house.  He loved it. Then he brought me a specialty drink, make that two of them, but I only got a picture of the first one.  He just walked by later and dropped another one - It was kinda like a Cape Cod.  I think Dennis may be tipping these guys too much.  We have spent every evening at the bar.  We met a guy there that is a retired stunt man. Jerry Spicer.  He is our neighbor at the park and is going to stay two weeks. He has worked with many famous people and even worked with John Wayne and even Harvey Weinstein (oh yea!).

Cheyenne is a nice town.  It is the capital of Wyoming and I find that a little funny because we are barely in Wyoming.  The train ride actually takes you over into Colorado as this ranch is in both states.  One of the first things we did downtown was find a couple of local breweries.  We went to Accomplice Beer Company located inside the Depot Museum Building and Black Tooth Brewing Company several blocks away.  Black Tooth had a food truck outside, which is pretty cool.  Both were great and the folks were very friendly.  We had a snack at Accomplice of French Fries with pork gravy and cheese curds.  They called this a French Fry Poutine.  It was very good.  Cheyenne has these 8 foot tall boots all over town too.  They are really fun.

 

 

 

 

Between breweries we made our way to the Capital and checked that out.  It is a beautiful building, but not much was going on there on a Friday afternoon. In the basement they have many vaults.  I peaked into one and that is where they stash their toilet paper!  Do they know something we don't.  It TP gonna be scarce again?

 

We also went to check out the Governor's Mansion. It was another old house. But on the way out we broke the door knob and the lady that works there almost couldn't get us out either. Kinda felt bad about that.

The best thing we did was go out to Lions Park and the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. We found out that in 1876 there were 5000 people in Cheyenne and 12 trees.  It isn't easy to grow things here.  We went through the interior and I was sorta disappointed. There were some beautiful plants, but it wasn't very big. Nothing on the scale of Moody Gardens or Shangri La. They have an outdoor garden geared towards children and we went through that too.  Still not that impressed.  Then we took out to find the trails they said were out there.  That is when it got beautiful! We walked all over that place and they had several different areas and there were people everywhere having picnics, doing yoga, just sitting and visiting or fishing.  Tons of folks out walking. It was fabulous.  Just about every section had a flower bed dedicated to pollinators.  We saw so many bees and butterflies.  We actually left and picked up some Filipino food and brought it back to the park for our own little picnic. We had never had Filipino and it was really very good.

They even had a labyrinth, but I got confused and didn't finish it.

Yoga in the park

So many water features

See the bee on the sunflower

Our Filipino picnic lunch

Dennis was afraid that we burned up our water pump during our stay with Greg and Ruth at Cimarrona Campground.  It would not work when we pulled over for me to go to the bathroom on our way here, so we spent one day trying to find the pump.  He pulled out the panels on two walls before he finally found it in the 'garage' below.  He found out that the pump is fine, but it looks like the plug wasn't tight and it came unplugged. So, we cleaned up the connections and plugged it back in and it works fine.  Thank goodness.

We will probably chill around the ranch tomorrow and we will pull out on Thursday.  We will head to Gering, NE for a couple of nights and finally arrive at the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore on August 23.

Can't wait to show you Mount Rushmore!