Today we moved onto our last stop of the trip, Cheyenne, which is the state capital of Wyoming – we are now back into Wyoming as we circle our way back to Denver, Colorado to fly home at the end the week.

The drive from Rapid City took about 4.5 hours but again we didn’t make any stops on route, apart from the obligatory doughnut stop…and to switch drivers.

Our Airbnb is really nice and comfortable, the only problem being we can’t get the darts catch up to work on the TV…which means we will have a lot to catch up on when we get back [no spoilers please!]

After unpacking we headed to our local brewery which was about a 20 minute walk away and en route we saw a few 8ft cowboy boots along the way which have been painted by local artists to depict the history of Cheyenne.

Apparently there are 39 of these boots dotted in and around the city and you can download a map of the locations if you want to try and find them all, a bit like the Gromit’s in Bristol we thought. The project is titled “These Boots are made for talking” so we were looking forward to spotting some of these over the coming days. There’ll be more pics in and amongst this post when we happen across any.

There are two breweries really near us and we opted to go to Black Tooth Brewing. We only stayed for one as we were pretty tired from the drive, plus we had big plans to hit more breweries the following day.

Wyoming State Capitol Building

On day 1, after a leisurely morning, we went to have a wander around the town area, stopping at various tourist attractions along the way…and our first stop was a visit to the Wyoming State Capitol building which was really impressive, both inside and out, and included a gold dome at the top which contained stained glass that had been provided by England.

This is a government building (built in the 1880’s), so I obviously felt right at home. The conference rooms were a lot plusher than the coroner’s court though. Ha ha

Even though it’s a working building, members of the public are welcome to come inside, so as we were wandering around, there were staff going about their normal working day. It was very surreal! The only thing you were not allowed to do is enter a room if the door was shut, but aside from that everything else was open.

It is a really smart building and at either end you have the Senate chambers and at the other the House of representatives chambers. There is a viewing gallery in each.

We also saw a really cool mural situated in the Joint Committee room which was done by a local artist and highlights some of Wyomings top sights…

…and sculptures of the ‘Four Sisters’ named Truth, Justice, Courage and Hope.

Wyoming State Museum

We then went to the Wyoming state museum and had a look around there, here are a few pics below including Woody and Jess from Toy Story and some interesting cowgirl outfits from famous cowgirls!

After the museum, we stopped for a pint at the Blue Raven brewery in town. It had a really unusual outside as it looked a bit like a haunted house, there was even an image of a “little girl” looking out at you from the round window at the top, and as you walked past, her gaze followed you…spooky. You can’t really make that out on the pictures though sadly…

We then wandered around a few of the shops, stopping to take a few pics of more giant cowboy boots that we saw.

We sampled a second brewery in town, Freedom Edge brewing, which had some very interesting art on the wall and even more interesting beers. Si had a mango flavoured beer called the Mangolorian so we thought the owner must be a Star Wars fan. On the way home we found a lovely little Italian restaurant for some al fresco dinner.

Day 2 – Curt Gowdy State Park

I thought our hiking days were behind us, so much so that I hadn’t even unpacked my walking gear at this place but on day 2 we decided to do a hike in the nearby Curt Gowdy State Park, called Hidden Falls.

This was a shortish 4.2 mile out and back hike which takes you along Crows Head Creek and winds along the river through forest and across a lot of man made bridges they’ve had to install as you zig zag across the river. There was some boulder clambering towards the end which was fun and then you reach the falls at the end which is hidden amongst the rocks. You can actually wade out to the base of the falls as it’s not that deep but you obviously would need wellies!

Cheyenne Botanical Gardens

Following the walk we headed back into town and went to a local Botanical Gardens. It was fairly small, but had free entry, and they had an amazing kids garden, which included a really cute area for puppet shows – one side (behind the curtain) there was a crate of puppets and the other side was some chairs…that’s Si behind the curtain putting on a show with a horse and a bird.

Oh and we saw one further cowboy boot…

It’s our last night tonight so may just have a quiet one ahead of our busy travel day tomorrow. We will be posting one final blog post though containing our “best bits”, like we’ve done on our other trips so stay tuned for that.

Lucy