Cheyenne

I admit, I’ve driven by Cheyenne WY many times, several times I even said to my husband, “We should stop some time and check it out”. “Why?”, was always his reply. Why indeed? I knew Cheyenne had been a major player in the wild west and they had a HUGE music concert called Frontier Days every summer. Neither of those was really reason to stop… then I heard about the boots.

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Cheyenne has giant cowboy boots placed all over town. They’re over six foot tall and have been painted by local artists. Flashback to Loveland Colorado. They have hearts painted by local artists and placed all over town. We had a ball looking for those so I thought the boots would be fun too. Finally a reason to cross the line and check out Cheyenne.

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It’s about an hour and a half drive from where my sons live in Thornton CO, so one morning during a recent visit, my son, Alex, and I hit the road. I’m a sucker for a western downtown with it’s original buildings of red brick, lots of shopping and places to nosh and Cheyenne delivered all that. Depot square was our first destination where the visitors bureau is tucked inside the original train terminal. We started our treasure hunt there with a map of the boots. You may ask, “If you have a map, how much of a hunt could it be?”. Well, let me tell you, the map is very vague. Not all the streets are on it and some of the boots are hidden down paths, around corners of buildings and such. So even if you are standing where it looks like the boot should be, it might be down the sidewalk and around the building. It was Cheyenne in June, so it was sunny and hot, but the ever present wind kept us cool as we tromped all over town for 2 hours (we had 2 hour parking, so that was the limit) and found all the ones in the downtown area, then we moved on to the one at the Botanical Garden.

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The Cheyenne Botanical Garden is free and they have a seperate childrens garden with hands on activities for the kiddos’ to do. If you are on a trip, I highly recommend a stop here to let them run off that energy so the rest of your trip can be quieter 🙂 Because unless your destination is Cheyenne, I know you still have a ways to go before you get anywhere. The grand conservatory had many beautiful tropical plants with whimsical statues nestled among them. Also a very nice balcony overlooking the children’s garden, lake and nature paths. There wasn’t a whole lot to see on the nature path, I think we were in between blooms…the bulbs had faded and the perennials were full of buds, but very few blooms. However, we didn’t get very far before the sky opened up and rain came pouring down making us hot foot it back to the car. Could have been a beautiful rose garden around the next bend, who knows. More left to explore next time.

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I’ve discovered a truth about myself. I tend to enjoy places were I have low to no expectations. All the hyped up places tend to let me down. The red Golden Gate Bridge and green blue grasses of Kentucky were two of the biggest let downs of my childhood. Yes, I did expect the bridge to be golden and fields of blue grass…guess I was a literal child. But, I definitely enjoyed my first exploration of Cheyenne and would enjoy a second round to check out the shops and find out what else it has to offer.

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