It was time to spend a Saturday doing something other than Work on the House. So, we jumped in the plane (at the crack of noon) and headed to Cheyenne. Although a brownish haze blanketed the entire area, it was a good day to look around at the landscape of northern Colorado. The snow brings out terrain details that are not so obvious otherwise: hedgerows, roads, paths, tilled fields, etc. I’m still pretty sketchy on regional geology here, but my understanding is that landforms in Wyoming preserve areas of the original high plains, which previously sloped down eastward from the Rockies. Later uplift led to speedy erosion of most of the high plains that existed throughout the continent just east of the mountains, but not in eastern Wyoming. There, the original high plains surface still exists, and is known as the “gangplank” since it serves as a ramp that allows travelers to go gradually from lower elevations to higher (around 8,000′ near Laramie, WY). Our airplane trips let me identify some of that over the larger landscape.
terrain and wind farm south of Cheyenne
To get back to human affairs: downtown Cheyenne was rather quiet and half-shut-down on the Saturday afternoon preceding the President’s Day holiday. But we wandered around window-shopping and reading historic marker signs, trying to decide where to get something to eat. The historic train depot was mildly busy, with a visitor center/museum at one end, a restaurant at the other, and this in-between:
Since the Korean restaurant was closed on Saturday (you may be thinking “???” and so did the locals whom we asked about the Korean restaurant…), we picked the brewpub at the depot for a late lunch of pulled pork and sweet potato fries. Although the building is no longer used as a depot for passengers, the railyard is still active with hundreds of freight cars with the Burlington Northern logo, which we could see coming and going from our table near the window.
Meanwhile, another symbol of the West is strewn about the downtown area: giant cowboy boots decorated with appropriate subjects. I’ve seen this kind of thing in other cities, usually with old carousel horses: local artists decorate them, they are auctioned off to raise money, and then the finished products are displayed around town.
Grumman parked at Cheyenne airport
We followed our late lunch with some errands, and then a walk in Lions Park, where noisy ducks and geese entertained us with their take-offs and landings on the partially frozen lake and we read the signs for some of the specialized gardens currently buried under a foot of snow. Then, the sun just having dropped over the horizon, we said our goodbyes to the violent-orange fellow Grumman parked next to us at the airport (but not its pilot, whom we never saw) and got in the plane for our trip home.
