The Wheels on the Bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. : Colorado to Wyoming

Fort Collins
The Coca-Cola/Angell's Delicatessen Sign was painted in 1958 by local sign painter Dan Brown, who received $400. At the time the sign was painted, the tenants of the J.L. Hohnstein Block were Mary and Jess Angell, who operated a deli at this location through the 1960s. As was common practice, the Coca-Cola Company agreed to paint the name of their business, Angell's Delicatessen, in the sign in exchange for the "privilege" of advertising their product on the building's wall.

Thanks to a grant received in 2009, the huge Coca-Cola/Angell's Delicatessen sign painted on the east wall of the historic building home to Coopersmith's Pub in Downtown Fort Collins got a little restoration to ensure this faded advertisement from 1958 keeps Old Town looking historic. To the untrained eye, the sign looks almost unchanged. In reality, the technology will adhere the paint to the brick, and protect it from further fading and chipping so we all can enjoy the sign for many years to come.

Meet Luna sporting her fancy doogles

Dinner at CooperSmith's with our Colorado Jeeping buddies.

Karen, Vicki and Keith

A warm summer night in downtown Fort Collins

After leaving Colorado we had some time and a few ideas of things to do before we needed to be in Idaho. We thought we would look up a long lost cousin of Cindy's in Gillette. Turns out she wasn't going to be home. We then thought we would go to Wind Cave National Park. Looked on line for available cave tours and there were none because the elevator into the cave was broke. They were waiting for parts and hoping to have the elevator repaired sometime in September. So then we picked a scenic diagonal route through Wyoming.

Tree in the Rock

Buford, Wyoming

Unfortunately we were only able to do a drive by due to highway construction which had the median closed.

There aren't a lot of trees in southeastern Wyoming, and there were probably even less when the Union Pacific laid its tracks there in 1867. So when the railroad men saw a little Limber Pine that seemed to be growing out of a granite boulder, they actually diverted the railroad to preserve it. They called it "Tree in the Rock" and the name stuck, even though when you visit the tree it looks to be growing from a dirt-filled depression between several big rocks. The railroad was eventually moved south, and the old road bed past Tree in the Rock was used as a wagon trail, then as the Lincoln Highway, and now as Interstate 80. The freeway splits around the tree, which has its own little parking area in the median and a spiky fence to protect it. It's called simply Tree Rock.

Limber Pines can live as long as 2000 years.

Well hello

The Fossil Cabin was built in 1932 as a roadside attraction. The cabin is built of dinosaur bones excavated at nearby Como Bluff, using a total of 5,796 bones. The cabin was built as part of a gasoline filling station along US 30 by Thomas Boylan. Boylan had come from California to homestead in Wyoming and had been collecting bones for seventeen years, intending to create sculptures of dinosaurs in front of his house and gas station along the Lincoln Highway.

Thomas Boylan was born in Humboldt County, California, in 1863. He arrived in Wyoming in 1892, and filed for a homestead near Como Bluff in 1908, where extensive deposits of fossilized dinosaur bones had been discovered in the 1870's. His 5,796 bones weighed 112,000 pounds. Initially intending to erect a complete skeleton, Boylan was daunted by the task, as well as the likelihood that few of the bones came from the same animal, or even the same species. Boylan, with the help of his son, built the 29 foot by 19 foot cabin in 1932. By 1936 Boylan had postcards printed, calling it the "Como Bluff Dinosaurium." In 1938 the cabin was promoted in Ripley's Believe It or Not as "The World's Oldest Cabin", although many common rock formations predate the era of dinosaurs. Boylan also called the cabin "The Building that Used to Walk."

Boylan died in 1947. Operated by his widow, Grayce, the gas station continued until the 1960's, when the construction of Interstate 80 caused a fall-off in traffic on Route 30. Grayce sold the property in 1974. The parents of the new owners lived in the house and operated the museum until 1992. The future of the Fossil Cabin has been uncertain, but a breath of new air is on the horizon for the long-closed Fossil Cabin Museum. It will be moving a mere 7-8 miles to the small town of Medicine Bow. It's intended resting place will be next to the Medicine Bow Museum.

5,796 Bones - 112,000 Lbs

I love the old fencing with concrete posts

On June 2, 1899, the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 1 was flagged down near Wilcox Station. Two masked men boarded the train and ordered the engineer to uncouple the passenger cars. The engine, pulling the express and mail cars, was then moved two miles down the line, where other members of the gang were waiting. When Union Pacific express messenger Charles Woodcock refused to open the express car, the bandits dynamited the door, knocking Woodcock nearly unconscious. Unable to open the safe, the robbers set another charge, miscalculating the amount of dynamite needed. The ensuing explosion not only blew open the safe, but also sides and roof of the express car. The thieves made off with approximately $50,000.00 The Wilcox robbery was attributed to members of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch Gang, all but one of whom eluded capture for the crime.

Under the marshes a thick mat of ice could be found late into June or early July. Westward bound immigrant would stop their wagons here for the purpose of breaking out chunks of ice to use in their drinks and to preserve meat.