Road Trip Part 1: Nebraska and Wyoming

**First things first I want to apologize to any readers I still have. As much as I love doing this blog I have been SOOOOOOOO busy the past month and it's not looking like it's going to slow down any now that I've started nursing school. I thought this summer would be prime blogging material, don't get me wrong it has been, but all the hundreds of possible blog posts are still in my head and may never be published. I would however like to share with you about my trip that I took earlier this month out west to Wyoming and Colorado. I've tried to post to Facebook and print out some pictures but I haven't even had time to do all that. I took around 1,300 pictures (no joke!) and would love to share some with you all here. I decided to break it up because with pictures and descriptions it's going to be a LONG post.**

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August 6th- Bright and early at around 6:30 am my friend Lora and I set out on our 8 hr. adventure out west. Our destination was Cheyenne,Wyoming. We didn't have anything other than making it to Cheyenne on our agenda for that day so we took it easy and just found things along the way. One of the fun things we found along our fun, exciting, joyous, happy, BORING trip across the ENTIRE state of Nebraska was the town of Aurora. I'm SO sorry to all my Nebraska friends your state is so boring to drive across in one day. Please don't hate me for hating on your state.

 It seemed like all we saw was a.) Corn b.) hay c.)signs for museums. LOL A sign for a museum was the reason we stopped in Aurora. They have this museum called the Plainsman Museum which had a bunch of history about their town and county. It also had a whole building full of old tractors and machinery along with a house, school, and blacksmith shop you could go into. They even had a little mock city inside the museum that represented different shops and businesses that use to be in the town. It was a great find and i'm glad we stopped. Here are some pictures I took from the museum.

Model of a Farm house

Old house they moved into town from the country. 

Old school

Blacksmiths shop

After we went to the museum we ate lunch in a nice little cafe and went along our way. Our next stop was in North Platte, Nebraska. We needed to fill up on gas and found a Starbucks with free wifi and plugins to charge our phones. We ended up stopping at a Starbucks in every state. While we were in North Platte we found a western store which was a little too expensive for our taste but right next door was a Goodwill where we found some great bargains including a Disney sound track cassette tape :) Going old school style. Our last stop in Nebraska was Sidney for a quick bite to eat for supper. Then finally.........

 We made it to BEAUTIFUL Wyoming. 

Our drive into Cheyenne was absolutely beautiful. We hit it right at sunset and I got some awesome pictures!

Aug 7th- On this day we spent just exploring Cheyenne. The one place I requested we go was to the Old West Museum which is at Frontier Park and has all the history about the Cheyenne Frontier Days. Even though we were a week late for the actual Rodeo and celebration it was still awesome to be there as a rodeo fan. 

Lane Frost Memorial out front

A Stripping chute for rough stock

2013 Saddle Bronc Champion Saddle that Wade Sundell / Chad Farley won! 

Steamboat was a bucking horse that served as the icon for the bucking horse symbol for everything Wyoming including the horse on their license plate. 

Some pretty awesome names in Rodeo history are on this wall. 

THE DADDY!!! 

Across the road from the Old West Museum was a small botanical garden. It was ok but I've been to better. It was a beautiful day so it was nice to walk around in the park and look at the flowers. The weather at home when we left was HOT and Humid so it was so nice to be rid of the humidity and have lower temperatures while we were out west. Here are some pictures from the botanical garden. 

After the botanical garden we at lunch at the Albany Restaurant. It was a little expensive but I highly recommend it if your needing a place to eat in Cheyenne. It's got such a historical vibe to it as well. Both Lora and I got a buffalo burger and shared an order of bull nuts. They were both rather good. 

The Bull Nuts 

In the afternoon we spent in downtown Cheyenne shopping at some stores and checking out the capital. We also found the Wyoming State Museum which was pretty cool to learn the history about the state. Here are pictures from there. 

This was written on a Buffalo skull. It is really a neat and emotional  thing to see. The picture below describes what it is. 

Wyoming Flag

A cool rock with lots of shell fossils. 

Sheep herders wagon! I will have one some day! 

This diorama talks about what happens at a roundup/branding.

Some silver bought by the State of Wyoming to put on the ship the USS Wyoming (I think)

An old road sign. 

After that museum we went on a hunt for some boots! Now we weren't looking for just any regular boots we were looking for 6 foot tall painted boots. They were made to raise money for the Depot. They are placed all over the city and we found all but 1 on the list. (it was in the airport lobby) I'm not going to show all of the pictures but some of my favorites. There were 19 total that we found. 

This was outside the Old West Museum

This one was outside the Wyoming State Museum

This one was all about bull riding and the stages of a bull rider from mutton bustin to riding calves to riding in the Cheyenne Frontier Days.

This was a religious one and was really neat. The spurs had crosses for the rowels. 

This one is inside a dealership which was closed but all the doors were open so we snuck inside to get a picture. 

This one we couldn't find right away but it was worth it it was such a neat one with all the weather stuff on it.

While we were on our search we found this amazing BBQ place called Mitchel's BBQ. We walked by and it smelled so good outside so we went back and decided to eat supper there. They had some amazing sauce which you could buy so I brought a bottle home!

My delicious pulled pork sandwich and cheese puffs :) 

Stay tuned for more info and pictures from the rest of my trip!