Day 11: Wyoming
6 July 2008The only experience I had with Wyoming prior to this trip was my assignment to act as a republican senator from that state when we did Mock Senate in AP History. I wrote “Wyoming- Wy Not?” on my name tag (a pun I’m so terribly proud of that I still write it into fiction pieces 10 years later at every available opportunity) and retaliated against my forced republicanism by attempting to legalize prostitution during the debates. I got a B-. My mom’s experience with Big Sky country was similarly limited, but she wanted to see it for herself based on her dad’s stories from when he and his heart murmur had to wait out their Army service in Wyoming rather than fighting the war overseas.
This was my easily my favorite state, and one of the few places I can see myself going back to. Not that I didn’t love everywhere we went (though, wait, I didn’t– I have nothing good to say about Nebraska), but while I was glad to see everything that we did, each day was another brick in my I’m Never Leaving New York wall. I missed it so much it was physically palpable, as pathetic as that was. In high school, when we found ourselves in a typically boring setting (grocery store, CVS) Jordan and I sometimes played a game where spent the whole trip acting like That Guy Who’s Reminded of His Exgirlfriend By Everything He Sees (”no, it’s nothing… it’s just… she loved lentil beans. She ordered lentil soup once at Friendly’s and when I asked her how it was she said it was ‘alright….’ I just wish she were here to see these lentils. They would have really made her happy.”) and I eventually started feeling like that about New York everywhere we went. When a woman randomly came up to my mom and I in San Francisco and gave us directions that we hadn’t asked her for all I could think about was how that never would have happened in New York and that I couldn’t wait to get back there. I had the same cliched “Nice place to visit, but…” reaction to every place we saw. After about three hours in Wyoming, though, I was emailing my boss about something for work and tacked on “…not that any of this matters, though, since I’m moving to Wyoming to compete in the Miss Frontier Days pageant and marry a cowboy.” She didn’t respond.
Cheyenne is covered in these big boots, each of which are decorated differently (this one is, I think, poker themed), like the apples that popped up all over NY that time or the mermaids that are in Virginia (VA beach? Norfolk?). We took this picture outside of the museum that’s devoted to Frontier Days, which we now know is a massive week-long rodeo and general hoedown in Cheyenne that’s visited by ten thousand people every year. This museum is pretty much the best advertising that they could have because afterwards my mom and I were like “Maybe next year we can come for the rodeo! How great would that be?” which is not a thought I’ve ever had before.
Know that that is, my friends? A surrey with a fringe on top. Rodgers and Hammerstein never lie!
The lobby of the museum houses the buggy collection, complete with creepy faceless dolls who are taking the long ride to nowhere:
And even Tom Selleck stopped by:
I’ve never really had trouble controlling my discretionary spending, but that was before I spent two weeks visiting about 18 different museum gift shops. I had a lot of trouble in the one for the Frontier Days museum and am now the proud owner of various things including a set of christmas ornaments featuring Santa riding a bucking bronco. I have a particularly difficult time when faced with their book sections, and can’t say no when I’m faced with tomes such as:
Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West.
I thought the fact that I was buying over $50 worth of useless crap would be enough of a distraction for the high school girl who rang me up (who mentioned to her coworker in passing that she had gone to high school 30 miles away from her house, which made me rethink my Wyoming relocation plans) but she zeroed in on this in a second. “I read this one, it’s SO good,” she told me. Which put me in kind of a weird place, because my instinct was to say “Oh, if you thought this was good, you should try Sin in the Second City, which is all about turn of the century whorehouses in Chicago” but that would have made me THAT GIRL, right? That Girl who trolls museum gift shops for books about hookers? Right? No one likes that girl.
After this, we went to a Cowgirl themed museum/ gift shop where we spent just as much time and money and where I found Meg’s birthday present. It’s going to take her awhile to grow into them and I don’t plan on making buying her consignment birthday presents a regular practice, but I couldn’t resist.
My #1 Rule of Meg Presents is that I won’t buy her anything that I wouldn’t wear myself, if it came in my size, but these guys took it another step (heyo!)- I covet these boots like you would not believe, to the point where I’m fairly sure I’m going to wind up buying myself a pair before ‘08 is out. This worries me a little since it means I’ll probably have to start wearing jeans, as I don’t approve of the Boot n Skirt look unless you’re at a theme party, but I’ll cross that bridge once I get to it.
3 Responses to “Day 11: Wyoming”
July 7th, 2008 at 11:39 am
NORFOLK!!
July 7th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
i almost bought you that book in oatman (home of the wild burros). this is not a lie.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I would love nothing more than becoming a collector of nonfiction books about prostitution, so please continue to keep me in mind.