Wyoming!

 

I went to Wyoming to visit my sweet friend Cindy!

It was a long drive, but I enjoyed it.

I was all stocked up with food and beverages!

And then over 13 hours later, I had arrived!~

Last year I stayed with Cindy in her cute house in Gillette, Wyoming, but her house is under construction this year, so we decided to go to Sheridan, Wyoming, and stay in an AirBnB.

I made spring rolls right away when I arrived.

And then we slept because it was very late!

This is the rental where we stayed!

Then we wandered the streets of Sheridan and enjoyed the cute shops!

Cindy needed some new wardrobe items, so we did some clothes shopping!

This trip was the first outing of my new Adidas platform sneakers and they're winners!

Cindy found this amazing, adorable little table that includes her home's accent colors!

This made me laugh: "Be the bison".

We ate lunch at Ole's Pizza, which was delicious!  The gluten-free veggie pizza with no cheese was excellent.  Sadly, the restaurant was closing down in November!

We met these fish!

This is Paco.  He's a very friendly piranha.

There was also a cichlid.  The fish were going to be rehomed when the restaurant closed.

I wish them a very happy and long life!

The garage across the street offered gluten free oil changes - ha!

Next, we visited the Kendrick Mansion, Trail's End.

It was on a hill and we could see the mountains beyond.  It was a HOT day (upper 90s) and there was a little bin of paper fans by the door to cool us off as we walked through!

I'm usually not very inspired by heavy architecture with lots of draperies and darkness, but this home was beautiful and gave me lots of ideas!

What inspired me in the kitchen?

The lovely grain of the wood cabinets and the hexagon tile floors.

LOTS of storage!

My favorite thing in the whole home was this view of the gorgeous staircase with the green leafy tree wallpaper!

Wallpaper is another thing I'm not a huge fan of, but this wallpaper is a dream!  It won me over.

Here's a close-up:

It looked great with these photos of important people and this bookcases.

HOT.  But happy.

The attic had been made into a ballroom with soaring ceilings and a little organ plus a record player.

Still hot.  They had a powder room for guests!  Subway tile even in the early 1900s.

FANTASTIC book cabinets!  Look at the diamond glass panes!

Outdoor art:

Cindy with BIG wings!

The next day, we browsed some more downtown, but it was Labor Day (yes, it's taken me a long time to assemble this post!), so most of the shops were closed.

This guy, while a native American chief, looked like an Andorian from Star Trek to me.

See one here.

Cindy needed some T-shirts, but all the shops were shut and we hadn't found any the day before, so we decided maybe WalMart might have some - and they did!

Then we had a delicious dinner!

Creamy mushroom pasta, potato wedges, cucumber tomato salad, and hummus (to dip the potatoes in!)

Our final day was HIKE DAY in the mountins!

We packed food and headed out.

It was a wet, rainy, cloudy, chilly day.  In fact, I think the high was in the 50s, which was a big change from the previous days in the 90s!

We stopped at this ranger station for a bathroom break:

We wanted to see Porcupine Falls, BUT we had heard the drive in (and back out!) could be tricky in bad weather and hiking down into a canyon (and back out!) in wet weather can be difficult, so we weren't sure if it was a good idea.  I'm glad we gave it a try because it was glorious!  The drive was paved up until about the last mile to the trailhead, so that was easy-peasy.

We made loud noises to encourage bears to stay away.

Spoiler: We did not get eaten.

There were lots of these cute pokey pinecones, already starting to grow new pine trees!  I brought one home and planted it, but a squirrel pulled it out of the pot and ate off the green bits, so I don't think it will grow a Wyoming pine tree.

The views were rugged and amazing!

The walk down (and back up!) was steep.

And then we saw the falls!

Then it started to rain!

After living 27 years in the Arizona desert, I'm still not over the excitement about water coming out of the SKY!

We reached the trail head again without incident (outside of lots of panting because the trail was steep and muddy!) and got onto the paved road in time so that we didn't get stuck in mud.

The drive back was atmospheric and lovely.

I still hope to see a moose in person someday, but that day we only saw cute deer!

Cindy left that evening for home, since it was a Sunday and she needed to be back in Gillette for work the next day.  It was sad to watch her leave.

I went back to visit Paco and get another pizza for the road.  I had taken meals with me on the trip, but they were meals that needed to be heated up and that weren't easy to eat on the road, so pizza was perfect.

Goodbye, Paco!

The next day was very foggy - or so I thought!  Turns out that it may have been smoke from the Canadian wildfires that had been burning all summer in Canada and drifting into the Northern US.

My breathing did start to act up on the way home.  Not sure if it was the smoke, but it might have been.

First gas stop:

First lunch stop:

I stopped probably every hour for a bathroom break and to make sure I was drinking enough (keeping that bladder healthy!)  

I made it home safely and fondly cherish the memories!

P.S.  I drove so well for so many hours in a row that I may have missed my calling as a long-haul trucker.

Here is my souvenir: a teensy glass bighorn sheep because I was in the Bighorn Mountains!