Laramie

We went to Laramie last weekend, just because. A friend of mine owns a hotel there and the room she got us was one of the fanciest rooms we have ever been in. Katie especially loved the jacuzzi bath in the room. I meant to take a picture of it, but forgot. In fact we forgot our camera on much of our tour through this college town.
Laramie is a very pretty place. The town is old, as are all towns in Wyoming, and it reminded us of the valley as you drive on the interstate. There are a lot of ranches, and farms. We drove up to the Medicine Bow National Forest, but could only drive so far as the snow covers the road. We saw a couple of herds of wild horses, I never get tired of seeing them. These herds had been spooked by something and they were RUNNING. What a sight.
We were sure to visit Katie's future alma mater, and possibly mine. The state of Wyoming gives students a discount on tuition depending on their grades. Katie told me she will get her degree in agriculture and have a big ranch, and I can come live on it. She will build me a house but "it will be hard." She also told me I could ride one of her future horses, but I will need a cowboy hat. "I don't have one," I told her, to which she replied, "you can use Daddy's." She will be a great cowgirl.
I may be attending U-Dub, as the locals call it, and getting certified to teach grammar school. I never thought I'd go back to school, but when an opportunity presents itself I have to try.

The University has an amazing, small, but amazing, museum of dinosaurs. They have an paleontology department here, and you can see what they have found, and what they are working on. I should have been a paleontologist. It looks like a pretty fun job. The little dinosaur above, I say little but it was bigger than me, is a prehistoric ostrich. The tall legs behind him belong to an apatosaurus. The Apatosaurus is the new name for what we used to call a brontosaurus. I don't know why they changed the name.

This guy looks like a velociraptor. Do you see those claws. YIKES!! I don't remember what it really is though.
The museum is two floors, with the second floor being a wrap around the first floor. That's how they fit the apatosaurus in. Katie and Rick were up on the second floor and Katie saw this head. "Look Daddy, a Triceratops." Rick looked appropriately amazed that Katie would know such a huge word. Indeed this is the skull of a Triceratops.

This bird dinosaur is a Pterodactyl. It was surprisingly small compared to the picture I had in my head. It was probably a little bigger than an Eagle. With a bigger head of course.

Katie really enjoyed the museum, but the squares outside of it were more her style. She stopped often at a set of squares so she could jump from square to square and count them.

It is a very pretty campus, surrounded by trees, and in the central green area there is a lot of sculptures.

This one was fun. It looks like a nest, and is a tangle branches that have intertwined, and it has been groomed to look like rooms.

Katie was able to run through it and go from "room" to room through the doorways.

We really enjoyed our trip, and can't wait to go back to see a football game, tour the territorial prison, and see more of Medicine Bow.