Cheyenne, Wyoming

In a bit of a change of pace for us, we had planned to spend a week near Cheyenne because we had tickets to see Keith Urban perform on the last night of Cheyenne Frontier Days.  Frontier Days is the biggest event of the year for Cheyenne (and maybe for the whole state of Wyoming) and they do a really good job of it.  The whole town really gets behind the ten days of festivities, which featured an authentic rodeo every other day, the Air Force Thunderbirds air show, a huge midway, an Indian village with performances by Wyoming dancers and musicians and a big parade.  We tried to do it all and really had fun there.  We camped about 1/2 hour out of town in a very nice state park and managed to do some hiking in addition to our trips to Cheyenne.  The Keith Urban concert was amazing as usual and the next day we headed out to one of the least-known mountain ranges in the country.  Wait 'till you see THAT place!

The whole town really did a great job on the parade

There were many antique wagons and cars...and lots of horses and mules

Cool horns!

Eating a buffalo burger at the rodeo....notice the hat

Steer wrestlers are truly crazy.  That is 700 pounds of beef he has to get on the ground!

The bucking bronco riders were only slightly less crazy

The Thunderbirds were spectacular, and we were so close

Tucker, enjoying the view of our campground

We hiked around North Crow Reservoir and had it almost to ourselves

Another view of our campground by Granite Springs Lake

Local Indian "Fancy Dancer" putting on a great show

Sunset from our campsite