Laramie, WY ??? Are you nuts?

Today we took it easy so I could continue to recuperate from a cold by driving around Laramie. The town is only a couple of miles accross but it is really pleasant. It is basically a college town, but it is still a big rail junction. The old downtown is only a few blocks square but is still going strong with the usual college-town mix of coffee-shops, restaurants, bike shops, etc. The old late 1800 and early 1900 brick buildings have been maintained in perfect condition and they even retained the perpendicular parking.

The college campus is pretty small and appears to have become somewhat crowded. Remarkably, the main architectural theme is Hokie-stone. Actually it is a native reddish limestone that is cut like Hokie-stone but it still gave a familiar feeling to the place.

Here is an example of the stonework:

Of course we went by the Cowboy stadium as shown here. It's not Lane, but it ain't bad.

There are UW Cowboys everywhere. Fence post caps, most all of the UW signs, all street name signs in town and even the license plates. The one below is a full-size bronze statue located outside of the stadium gounds.


One of the downtown churches is also made from the reddish Hokie-stone. This is just one example of how well kept the town really is. By comparison, Taos seemed dirty and run-down.


Believe-it-or-not the pic below was taken at the police station. We don't know who put the state flag up-side down, but another flag at the opposite corner of the building was right-side up.


Now here's something you don't see back East. This pair of foxes had set-up home in the front yard of an elementary school. The plot of land was probably 100 ft. by 150 ft. with homes on three sides and the school on the forth. OK, behind the school was about 50 miles of open prairie before you hit the next set of mountains, but still it was pretty cool.


After touring town we headed up to the Snowy Mountains 30 miles west of town. Boy, they got the name right. Last week Laramie got 4 inches of snow while the mountains got up to 4 ft. The Snowy Mountain Scenic Highway goes right across the mountain range, but in the winter they close the road part way up and open up 225 mi. of snowmobile trails. You can see snowmobile tracks in the pic below.


We also took a look a Snowy Range Ski Resort. It's small (by Western standards) with only a 900 ft. vertical but it looked really nice for our modest snowboard abilities. Hopefully, I will get over my cold and we can board and hike the mountains later this week.

Tomorrow we plan to take a day trip to Cheyenne.