Surprise, Surprise...
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry!
As I mentioned in my previous post, we got rained out of Yellowstone and the next destinations on our itinerary were also under the same rain system; Mt. Zion & Bryce National Park. Our tent and gear were soaked so we headed to drier climes in search of a place to dry out and see if we could salvage our trip. We ended up in Laramie, Wyoming and what a perfectly wonderful little town! The population was under 31,000 in the 2010 census and it is the home of the University of Wyoming, Wyoming Technical Institute, and a branch of Laramie County Community College. It has maintained it's architectural heritage as a town established in the early 19th century without being kitschy or artificial. Don wasn't up to camping so we looked for an inexpensive motel that could tide us over until he was feeling better. Well, did we ever find it... |
| I just realized that Google has place an ad for this hotel on my blog. I didn't do that.This is a genuine and unpaid compliment to this business. |
A family owned establishment with a very nicely appointed room in what looked like a 60's style motel from the outside. Nice, large room with a flat screen TV, free WiFi, clean and spacious bathroom. A real treat. I wanted to plug them because it IS a family business and the young lady who checked us in was there with her 2 month old baby girl late at night and early in the morning. They are still working on remodeling the place and I highly recommend it if you are in the Laramie area.
And why wouldn't you be? It's a truly charming town. Laramie is named after Jacques LaRamie who in spite of disappearing around 1810 ends up having more things named after him in Wyoming than any other person with the exception of Jim Bridger. One of the things that struck my fancy was the fact that Laramie was the first place in the US to offer suffrage to women and the first place where women sat on a jury.
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| Statue of Luisa Swain, first woman in the US to cast a ballot; park on 1st Street, the Johnson's Hotel, established 1910; silhouettes of the past on a building site and an old Chesterfield ad. |
We didn't spend a lot of time in Laramie, something I might
want to remedy the NEXT time I go out west. Because of our change of plans
we now had a new mission.
My husband's parents met and were married in Trinidad,
Colorado in 1925. My mother-in-law, Florence Johndrow, was a fabulous story
teller and both Don and I regaled in her many stories of how she was spending
the summer in Trinidad, Co. with her Aunt, Mrs. F.M. Barth when she met the
dashing Julian Johndrow. He was considerably older than she was and she
would sneak away from her rather severe Aunt and meet him behind the bandstand.
Our mission was to find THE bandstand. And we did!
I can just imagine a 17 year old Florence Gwynne giggling as
she meets up with her young man stylishly decked out in a straw boaters hat. I
can fantasize about how daring she must have felt and how dazzled she was by
his good looks and gentlemanly kindness to her.
I never met my father-in-law as he passed away long before I had the
good fortune of meeting MY Mr. Johndrow and being dazzled by his good looks and
gentlemanly ways. But Florence's story telling was enough to make it come to
life for me! We were blessed to have found the location where the whole story began!
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| The statue of Kit Carson, for whom the park is named |
:-)
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