Prairie Land and Beyond

I forgot to mention that there were a lot of nuttily-named businesses in the wild west.

After our adventures in Red Lodge, Montana Dan and I headed to Bozeman to visit a friend who inherited a cattle ranch. She's an actress and writer who now runs a box beef business in addition to her creative pursuits. She invited us out for shipping day - the one day each year that the cattle gets separated, weighed, and shipped out to the buyer. Dang if I didn't see some real, true blue cowboys!

After lunch with said cowboys, we wandered around cute little downtown Bozeman, where we met Z. and her husband for dinner and where I bought a cute hat:

On our way home we got a flat. At 11pm. Out in the middle of nowhere. So thankful for AAA.

After seeing some pictograph caves, where ancient Indians drew pictures, exploring the Battlefields of Little Big Horn (Custer's Last Stand site - a must-see, people!) and visiting Moss Mansion, among other things, it was time to say goodbye and fly south to meet up with Christi in Cheyenne, WY.

Ah, Christi. Sparkly Lady of Love. So nice to see that little muffin again. Cheyenne is tiny, especially for a state capitol, so an afternoon pretty much covered that. I swear, you can just walk right into their capitol and no one will stop you. The governor's office is to the right of the front door, so anyone could just rush him without being stopped. Wyoming must be a pretty safe place. It's also the least populated of all the states and Cheyenne apparently has the cleanest air.

Any-hoozle, we went down to Colorado a few times to round things out. My recommendations? Estes Park (cute mountain town, elk grazing all around, and the hotel that inspired The Shining), Boulder (lovely nature all around, fun pedestrian shopping area Pearl Street), and Denver (breakfast at the fantastical Snooze, (the Sandwich I Am is to die for - soft pretzel roll filled with scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese and a sausage patty, served with a side of smoked cheddar hollandaise & house hash browns), renting bikes, Larimer Square, cool antique stores). We found ourselves in the midst of the "Occupy Denver" protest. SWAT was everywhere, but it seemed pretty low-key to me.

If you're ever in the Denver area, you might also take a quick half hour for the Hammond's Candies factory tour. It was just us and a bus-full of first-graders who were freaking going out of their minds with excitement....