Celebrating the Fourth of July in Cheyenne, Wyoming

So now you know how far behind we are in getting blogs published! We are working hard to get caught up, but for now you must pretend that it's the 4th of July! As full-time RVers, we know that it is important to find a place and make reservations early for summer holidays. The Fourth of July is probably the busiest camping holidays, and we chose to spend this one in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We arrived a couple days early, because we wanted to tour the state Capitol.

The people of Wyoming are proud to say that they just completed a big renovation of their capitol, bringing it back to its original glory. Even though it has gone through several paint jobs and color schemes over the last 100+ years, it is now back to the same look it had when it was built in 1888.

On the dome above and throughout the building, talented artists recreated the original painting technique. This technique is called trompe l'oeil, which translates to "fool the eye" because it produces the illusion of being three-dimensional.

Besides getting back to the authentic paint schemes, the renovation also shined up all the original marble tile flooring and wooden staircases.

It also repaired and brightened the stained glass ceilings that are found in both the chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives.

But the most famous room of the state capitol is the historic supreme court chamber. For history buffs, do you know what ruling was made in this room in 1889? Wyoming Territory laws gave women the right to vote. So when Wyoming became a state in 1889, Wyoming became the first U.S. state to allow women to vote when it was determined in this room to keep that territorial ruling.

Wyoming was also the first state that elected a female governor. Nellie Ross was at the center of this picture from 1925, surrounded by all the male senators in Wyoming that year. Who knew that Wyoming was at the fore-front of recognizing the importance of women?

After touring the inside of the capitol building, we also walked the grounds. This is the "Spirit of Wyoming" statue. It looks like this cowboy has a riding style similar to Denisa's.

Because we needed to learn more about our new state, we walked over to the Wyoming State Museum, just a block from the capitol building. There is no admission charge to roam the displays inside and soak in more Wyoming knowledge. We didn't take any pictures inside, but we did snap one of the giant cowboy boot just outside.

These boots show up all over Cheyenne, and we found a couple more in front of the old train depot downtown.

Downtown at Depot Plaza we found some of the quintessential parts of Cheyenne's tourism. Denisa is standing beside another cowboy boot, while the Cheyenne Street trolley car waits for customers in front of the old train depot. 

The flowers are lovely downtown, and Denisa can't resist a picture of new summer flowers and old iconic buildings.

But the main reason we wandered to the Depot Plaza is to hear the live music that happens here on Fridays. We ate at the food trucks that congregate here, and two-stepped in the plaza this evening. It feels so good to see people gathering and festivals happening again! We've managed to find live music and dancing three nights in a row this week!

Historic downtown Cheyenne is full of old store fronts, that house shops and yummy places like the bakery where we stopped for cookies. We also found murals all over town, celebrating the western heritage of Cheyenne.

What kind of western town doesn't have a shoot-out every day at 6 p.m.? So we sauntered over to the home of the Cheyenne Gunslingers for the nightly bank robbery.

They made it clear that they only use blank shells and that every precaution is made to be sure that everyone is safe. But they also made the point that blanks can still blow giant holes in pop cans at close range.

We're not saying who the sheriff was trailing at the gun slingers, but we saw this reward poster up at the Wyoming welcome center. It looks like there is a big reward out for this "most desperately despicable and dangerous" outlaw.

In case one should think that Cheyenne is only about shooting and cowboy boots, we also toured the three-story conservatory at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. It was free, and packed with unusual floral specimens.

These two blooms share the prize for the most unusual flowers in the conservatory.

We walked all the trails outside as well, where the flowers were in full bloom.

We walked below the arch at this entrance of the outdoor gardens.

In keeping with the cowboy culture in Cheyenne, we see that metal entry is actually made of hundreds of horse shoes.

The prize for the flower with the "best combination of color" goes to these unusual purple and blue blooms.

Besides beautiful flowers, this garden includes Locomotive 1242--the oldest locomotive in Wyoming. 

We enjoyed the interesting fence that surrounded the train, especially when we read the story about its history. Floyd Young was the engineer of this locomotive at one time. Upon his retirement, Floyd and his wife walked the old train tracks, picking up old metal things that had been discarded along the tracks. They welded them together to make a fence around their home. When Floyd and Edna died, it is fitting that their sons donated the fence to surround old 1242 here in the botanic gardens.

When we were on the third floor of the conservatory, we could look down on the areas adjacent to the botanical garden. We saw a combination of colorful domes and whirl-a-gigs. So we walked over to the Paul Smith Children's Village to see the fun stuff up close.

We found teepees and hidden whispering tubes and unusual plants that children (and some child-like adults) enjoy. We also made a little music with the xylophone in the middle of the children's garden.

At the entrance of the Children's Village was one of the prettiest boots we found in Cheyenne, decorated in shiny tiles.

Walking through the botanical gardens, we noticed these blossoms, just ready to explode into bloom.

On a nearby stem we found the flowers, looking a little like floral fireworks on the Fourth of July.

That brings us back to the beginning of the blog, when we were looking for a good place to spend Independence Day.  After driving in to church on this Fourth of July Sunday, we returned to the campground to grill out burgers and eat watermelon for this traditional holiday. It also looks like we have landed right in the middle of fireworks central. We took a picture of the "welcome to Wyoming" sign at the state line, and right beside it was a billboard for one of the FOUR huge fireworks warehouses at the first exit into Wyoming. 

That's the same exit as our RV park, so every time we drove by, we could see the advertising exploits of the four companies trying to coax customers into their store. Two companies used brightly painted truck trailers with guys with bull horns yelling out the reasons to go to their store for the best fireworks bargains.

As the days counted down to the fourth, the crowds increased. The large parking lots couldn't hold them all, as they parked along the highway and on the grass. It looks like Colorado has different fireworks regulations, as we saw many out-of-state license plates parked beside the road too.

Even though we didn't need to buy any, Denisa wanted to stop in to see the mayhem inside. The displays were beginning to look sparse, and people were waiting in line well down the aisles with their shopping carts loaded full! This is definitely big business!

We didn't need to buy any, because we drove into Cheyenne for a great viewing sight near Lions Park.

We have to say that Cheyenne put on an impressive 20-minute pyro-technic display that ended in a flurry of fireworks. Cheyenne was a great place to celebrate the independence that we are so blessed with in this country! Happy (though very belated) 4th of July!