Downtown Cheyenne

(F.E. Warren AFB, WY) Hi 78 Lo 56 -- We went for a walk this morning. It was a bit breezy and cool, but not cold. There’s a gravel path at the famcamp so we decided to follow it. They led up a hill overlooking the surrounding area. The hill blocks the wind from the campground, which is nice. (Click on the pictures to make them larger.)
.

View from the hill. The famcamp is in these trees.


Looking toward Cheyenne, there’s lots of windmills to the right.


Sign coming into the Famcamp


This sign is on a different route into the famcamp than the one we took. Wait... no trailers?


Here's the reason. We're glad we researched the correct route into the park ahead of time.


We have a train track up on the hill next to our park, but so far we’ve only heard a train twice. Fortunately they don't blow their whistles.


While we were walking this antelope was sitting in the shade. She just watched us walk by. Antelope are all over the base. They've become accustomed to being near humans.


Here's a small herd.


A couple pictures of the buildings around the base. The red brick architecture is very pretty.












There’s signs around telling about all kinds of wildlife we may see. I didn’t get a picture, but real close to where we saw the antelope we saw some prairie dogs. I may take a day and sit out in a lawn chair out and just watch them.

We went to Cheyenne mainly to see where we need to take the RV tomorrow for our slide repair.


There’s signs and decorations everywhere announcing the upcoming Frontier Days that start on the 20th of this month. We won’t be here but it’s a huge deal and draws people from all over the world. It has the biggest outdoor rodeo in the world.


We drove by the State Capitol building.


There’s big painted cowboy boots all over town. Here are a couple that we saw.

We arranged to meet our friend Marsha at The Bread Box Bakery and Restaurant for lunch. One of the reasons we came to Cheyenne was to see her and her husband Kerry, an old military buddy of Jim's. We're going to their place for dinner tonight, so we'll have more about them in tomorrow's post.

We stopped at the Wyoming State Museum. I forgot to take a picture of the building, but found this on the internet.


The museum is free and it’s quite large and comprehensive. We spent a couple hours learning all about the history of Wyoming. Pictures were hard to get because I couldn't use flash, but I managed to get a couple of pictures of one of my favorite exhibits of bead work from the Indian tribes in the area. These are made with little tiny beads.


As with most museums, what is now called history, we lived through. Scary sometimes, and it makes us feel very old. :)


One thing we wanted to see while in Cheyenne was the world's largest steam locomotive. Twenty-five Big Boys, the world's largest steam engines, were built for Union Pacific between 1941 and 1944 by American Locomotive Co. in Schenectady, NY. They were so big that the frames had to be articulated so they could go around curves. They were 132 feet long and weighed 1.2 million pounds. During construction of the first engine, a worker chalked "Big Boy" on the smoke box door, and the name was adopted. Big Boy No. 4004 made its final run from Cheyenne to Laramie, WY in 1958. It was stored in Laramie for a few years until it was donated to the city of Cheyenne. It was moved to Holliday Park in 1963, which is where it still sits.
















Look closely and you can see Jim standing next to the white sign on the fence. This train is huge to say the least!


We first heard about Big Boy when we were at North Platte, NE and visited the Bailey Rail Yard. Cheyenne's 4004 is one of only eight remaining Big Boys on display throughout the country.

We left late in the afternoon for dinner with our friends Kerry and Marsha. We'll tell about that in tomorrow's blog, along with how our trip to Jolly Roger's RV to have our slide repaired turns out.