We got a late start Sunday. I am a big planner for trips but for some reason, I had not come up with a plan Sunday. We were planning on taking a drive to get a better feel for Wyoming but where? Stuff is far apart here so its not like you can hop over to another bug city in an hour or so. We also thought about going South to the Rockies but we were heading there Tuesday.
We decided to make a loop. We would head Northwest towards Medicine Bow and then see how far we wanted to go. Laramie only has 32,000 people, you get to the edge of town and it is a wide open prairie. The state feels really empty most of the time but it has a lot going on like grass, brush and animals. A surprising number of animals, lots of cows, horses, chipmunks, deer and even a coyote or two.
There is a surprising amount of history. First we stopped at the fossil cabin. The area has a lot of old bones. The cabin is supposedly built from dinosaur bones. It was being renovated but was still cool.
In the town of Medicine Bow we saw the Virginian an early 1900s hotel still in operation. The town also has a rather large wind farm. We pulled over to take some pictures, they have a lot of convenient places to stop and see nature and man made stuff.
I decided to pull out the drone and had some fun. Was not sure how well it would fly at such a high altitude but I gave it a shot. It flew well though it does warn you that the air is thin. After some flying, we were off again. We curved around headed South to flank the mountains we visited yesterday.
After passing through Saratoga, famous for its natural spring, we entered Medicine Bow National Forest again from the West. We saw the park from the East yesterday so this was like watching the back of water. Well, not really but today we had glorious weather and we had unfinished business. Luckily we had bought the two day pass on Saturday thanks to our earlier conundrum.
Lake Marie was much better in the sun, stunning does not do it justice. We walked the path around the lake and met some other tourist and people playing with their dog. We even got involved in the fetch. The dog was quite cute and quite into retrieving his stick from the lake.
We revisited the Libby flats post and shot some more pictures in the non rain. The last stop was the scenic overlook where we could now stand end enjoy the view. There is a marker there to the 1955 United 409 tragedy. It is what we now call a CFIT, controlled flight into terrain. A DC-4 impacted the mountain costing 66 lives. They say fragments of the plane remain on the mountain.
It was time to head out, we made a quick stop in Centennial for a snack and then back to Laramie. We took a short break for food and to re-packed and then we were off to town. Why re-pack? The great thing about flying yourself is no baggage fees. When we started flying as a family we had to pack smart because we were weight limited.
As we have moved to bigger planes and now only have two of us, weight is less of an issue. When we were packing, we didn’t quite know what the temperatures would be so we tended to take some extra shirts and such. Basically we have way too many clothe with us so we took only what we will need for Tuesday to Saturday and put that in one duffel, the other duffel will get left in the plane.
Once we re-packed we headed into town to see the Mural project but that’s another story.
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