Wild, Wild West

Tonight, we are in Torrington, WY - about 200 miles north of Denver.  In between, we spent the better part of the day in Cheyenne.

It's Frontier Days there in Cheyenne; the greatest celebration of Western life anywhere.  We didn't have a great experience at Cheyenne Harley-Davidson (but that's a story for later,) and we were frustrated with how slowly the ticket line moved at the Frontier Park grounds.  But that stuff aside, it turned out to be another great day nonetheless.  The rodeo is the "Daddy of Them All," in its 115th year.  I had never seen a rodeo, and I don't think I've ever even touched a cow.  But  I do know a bunch of country songs :-)

So we spent the day watching bull ridin', steer ropin', and all kinds of other cool stuff.  There isalso a neat Indian Village, complete with tepees, a trading post, and Native American dancing exhibitions, etc.  The flute music is ethereal.  There were plenty of city slickers there, so we didn't stick out by any means.  We took off around 5, and got here to Podunk about 6:30.

The weather is great.  Even down off the mountains, it was in the low 80's and sunny today.  When we pulled in to our hotel in Denver on Thursday night, we got like 3 drops of rain on us, and when we returned to the same place Friday night, we got 3 more.  The sun was out in both instances, so it was never a question of if we were going to get soaked at any time. 

We're back on schedule again also.  We were never really behind, but that short day leaving Kansas City in a heatwave cost us an extra day in Denver.  Instead of returning after Frontier Days, we instead had the bikes loaded and continued north afterward.  We're planning 2 nights in the Badlands before heading east in earnest.

NOTE:  We seem to have fried the memory card in the camera.  There were 2 days' worth of pics on there, including some incredible shots from 14,000 feet.  We're hoping to salvage them somehow when we get home, but for now we have a new card in there and all of today's images are good to go.  I just have to get around to uploading them.