Coming to you tonight, LIVE from Sheridan, Wyoming. Home of the wildest west you've ever hoped to experience (no joke, the Wal-mart cashier had a belt buckle bigger than life attached to his Wranglers!). Where Buffalo Bill Cody held auditions on the front porch of the town Inn, and Don King, famous saddle maker, calls home.
In the three days we've been here, we've put hundreds of miles on the Ford and visited more places than I thought possible with two small children. Thank God for the installed DVD player.
Here, the Reader's Digest Version:
Day Leaving: Drive to Sheridan. Not many houses to stop at if you run out of gas. Lots of wide open prairie land with cattle and horses grazing. Even on the interstate, we saw few other vehicles. Certainly a contrast between I-25 and I-75! Found the hotel easily and ordered pizza from a local pizzeria. Very tasty.
Day One: Wait in hotel room for the snow to stop. Decide it's not going to stop and bundle up for a drive around town, exploring. Main St. looks promising. Drove around the cemetery (always one of my favorite activities) and found several historic looking buildings near the RR tracks, including the famous Sheridan Inn. Came back to the hotel for lunch/naps while Mom goes grocery shopping for the week. With weather still blizzard like, and kids cooped up and screaming, we ventured back out, this time up to Ranchester, over to Dayton, nearby towns, and followed the country road in the foothills back into Sheridan. Hoping for an early bedtime and better weather tomorrow, we head back to the hotel for the evening.
Day Two: Fifty degrees, a few sprinkles, lots of wind and an exciting adventure to Kendrick Park, a huge playground at the base of an equally huge mansion. Lars spent most of the time chasing a squirrel, yelling, (and I quote), "Squirrel, come back here!" While Eden enjoyed climbing and having Daddy's full attention, Mom and Lars took a walk over a bridge, throwing sticks in on one side and watching them come out the other side. Fascinating.
After a good hour there wearing the kids out, we got in the Ford and headed up to the Bighorn Mountains, elevation 8900 feet. The drive up was beautiful, red rock sheers up one side, and a prairie grass drop off on the other side. Kids slept nicely, but a few miles before Burgess Junction, about an hour into the drive, the blizzard began again and we were in 4' of snow with ice and snow covered roads and not a whole lot of other traffic. Deciding we didn't need any unnecessary stress on this trip, and noticing no cell phone signal, we turned around and headed back down the mountain. The drive down was hair raising (at least for the passenger) but the temperature rose as we descended, and it was balmy once we made it back to Sheridan. Back to the hotel for the NASCAR race.
Day three: Kids were up early, so we dressed for Sunday School and Worship Service at Immanuel Lutheran Church with Rev. Paul Cain. I wish I'd had my camera. The coat rack had a shelf above it, filled end to end with up-side-down larger than life cowboy hats! Classic. The communion service was full of people and beautiful voices, they used a service I knew without looking (which was good, b/c Lars slept the whole service on my lap) and had a choir that sounded wonderful. Eden caught me singing softly during the choir piece, and she said to me, "Mommy, it's not our turn to sing. It's just the blue team." The blue team? Oh, the choir is wearing blue robes. Funny.
After service and lunch, we headed out to Montana, a place none of us had ever been. We first found Tongue River State Park, and tooled around there before heading further north. Next, we came across Rosebud Battlefield State Park, one of the many Indian/Government battlefields in this part of the country. Since the kids were so well behaved and we still had plenty of daylight, we headed further north and west to the Battle of Little Bighorn National Park. What a nicely laid out park, with lots of easy hiking trails, a great drive with signs to read along the way, and hundreds of scattered gravestones throughout the ridges and fields to ponder. The National Cemetery is well kept and the museum is worth the few minutes it takes to peruse. I, of course, left our National Park stamp books in the hotel room, so was kicking myself all the way back to Sheridan, 70 miles plus some change.
Now, I have laundry running in the washroom downstairs and I'm reeling over the black and white run hockey game while everybody else sleeps quietly. Tomorrow, the Pastor's conference begins and the week will go quickly. For now, I'll enjoy the peace and quiet!
No comments:
Post a Comment