Our stop in Casper turned out to be quite rainy but we did find some rainy day options. We accidently came upon the Trail Interpretive Center as this area was a cross roads for the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Pioneer Trail (which Bringham Young used to lead the Mormons to their new home in the Great Salt Lake Valley), the California Trail and the trails used by the Pony Express.
Mark had fun with the diorama of the ox drawn wagons.
But that is only one segment of this amazing display. The screens at the top are used for the panoramic video that describes all the trails that passed through this area of the country.
One really fun display was an opportunity to experience what it was like to ride in a stage coach. The coach rocked and rolled and there was a video that played in the windows so you also got to see the passing countryside as you bounced along.
This ad for pony express riders was quite interesting.
We did get in a game of golf at Three Crowns - I am including this photo because it was the site of a former Amaco Refinery. It's just amazing how they can transform a refinery into a beautiful golf course.
Sadly, it was cold and wet for most of our stay in Casper, but we did get to enjoy some beautiful rainbows. Don't get me wrong, we did appreciate that the extra water is always welcome to fight the years when they didn't get a lot of rainfall.
Yup, we were open to anything that was indoors - we even went to the dog show at the local fairgrounds.
And, we got to eat out at some neat locations like the Cottage Café.
Our campground was adjacent to the Fort Caspar Museum so we took the short hike out to the museum. We were really tickled to see the forerunner of the RV in this Covered Wagon.
In addition to all of the items in the museum they also had the reconstructed 1865 military post open so you could see what it was like to serve during that period of Westward expansion in U.S. history. This is the mess hall used by cavalry and infantry troops stationed at the fort.
Prior to the railroads the wagon trains had to figure out how to cross the Platte River. For a long time they just built rafts and floated the wagons across, but a good percentage of them did not make it. Finally, an enterprising individual, Lousi Guinard built a bridge (1000 feet long and 17 feet wide) which was greatly celebrated even though you had to pay to cross ($1 to $6 depending on the river conditions) - the beginning of the toll road!
Two of the interesting things we saw as we toured the outside were:
This jail house - looked more like an outhouse to us!
We were positively shocked when we realized that these huge mounds of sand were actually ant hills - never saw anything like it!
But we had enough of working around the rain and inside activities so we cut our stay in Casper short a few days and added new stops in Sheridan and Cody, Wyoming. That's one of the benefits of RVing - you can readjust your schedule whenever you want to.
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