Tag: horses

Tourist Review – The Messenger Museum @ Cheyenne, Wyoming

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Animals, Food, Friends, Learning, Tourism Review, Traveling

There’s a lot to see and do when visiting the Cheyenne / Laramie Wyoming area, but there’s more than a few hundred miles to go between now and Casa Grande, Arizona which is our target for November 1st. We knew we couldn’t see it all.

We talked with our good friends Matt and Sherry because they just spent a few months in this area volunteering at the Wyoming Historic Territorial Prison in Laramie and I knew they’d have some suggestions of where we might visit.

They enjoyed walking around downtown Cheyenne and visiting the Wyoming State Capital, the Wyoming State Museum, and other downtown landmarks along with taking in a visit to the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins.

Although the exercise we’d get walking around downtown would do us all a lot of good, I knew my knees wouldn’t last very long. We spent some time looking online at reviews and found a lot of wonderful reviews for Messenger’s Old West Museum. We decided to check it out.

We found it on the near east side of downtown Cheyenne just north of I-80/US-30 (the Lincoln Highway). What a great find it was!

This is a private collection of Charlie and Katie Messenger that’s just chock full of Old West-era carriages, saddles, models & memorabilia exhibited alongside mounts of bears & wolves. No, they did not hunt/kill any of the wild animals exhibited, they bought them all from other collections. They started their collection over 30 years ago and opened it to the public 20 years ago.

It’s tucked away in a residential / light commercial neighborhood where the Messengers operate their self-storage business. In fact, the entrance to the museum is the same place that storage customers go to pay their rent. The day we were there one of their employees (Marco) welcomed us and allowed us to start our self-guided tour. We were the only ones there and as we each were drawn to different displays, you could hear any one of us exclaim “Oh Wow! – Look at This!”.

What’s really great about this collection is the way all the items are displayed. It’s as if the owner secretly holds a degree in Museum Conservatorship or has received special training as a Museum Curator. It’s wonderful to read about what you’re looking at. Not just what it is, but where it came from, how the Messengers obtain the item, and the significance to their family.

The carriages are especially awesome. These are all REAL horse drawn carriages from the 1800’s old west that have been lovingly restored and/or rebuilt. The Messenger family has driven all of these carriages at one time or another and many of the antique automobiles too for participation in a parade or serving as props in television commercials advertising tourism in Wyoming.

The big burgundy colored carriage in the picture below (Overland Stage Line) is Buffalo Bill’s personal carriage and harness.

None of the items in the collection are replicas, they’re the real thing.

  • Buffalo Bill’s personal carriage
  • Their kitchen for private parties

Marco told us that it’s too bad we came in early morning and Charlie (Mr. Messenger) wasn’t there yet. This has been a labor of love for the Messengers for many years and Charlie typically stops in daily to check up on the business and often chats with visitors about some of the displays giving the guests more insight on the history of the early west.

After our visit we (of course) stopped for lunch and afterward we were nearly back to our camp in Pine Bluffs when my cell phone rang. It was Charlie. He was hoping to catch us before we were out of town so that we could visit a while.

It wouldn’t work this time, but we’ll be sure to leave Messengers Old West Museum on our Bucket List for the next time we are anywhere near Cheyenne Wyoming. And you should too!

The museum is open Monday-Friday, 8:00am – 5:00pm, no admission charge, but donations are welcomed.

That’s all for now, but more to come … thanks for riding along. Take Care of yourselves and each other.

Herb & Kathy

Settling in at Dale Hollow

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Animals, Camping, Sightseeing, Traveling, Volunteering, Working

Well, we finally arrived at Dale Hollow Lake Resort State Park on Wednesday. We checked with Bobbie at the gatehouse and went on in to our new home for the next three months, site Q1.

Our site for the next few months

At first we were a little disappointed because we are in one of the three equine loops here. There are 18 loops, every loop has 8 RV sites, so there’s a total of 144 RV sites with 24 of those being equine sites.

One of the “loops” at the campground

It’s not that we dislike horses .. we enjoy them – not riding them of course, just watching them, talking to them, and given the opportunity, to pet them!

Ivan and Connie pulled into our loop .. they’re from Summer Shade, about an hour west of here toward Glasgow. They have a farm over there but like to come here a few times each summer and ride the trails with their other horse buddies. They’ve been enjoying the park for years.

Their son and daughter-in-law and their kids came in their motorhome so the family is having a good time horseback riding, bicycling, eating together, and telling stories around the campfire in the evening moonlight.

The reason that we were disappointed about being here in Loop Q with the horses is that there’s no wifi here and we sit in a low spot in the park with no cell service and no over-the-air TV reception. Argh!

But … For the Good News … Because it’s an equine area, there’s no playground, no swimming pool, no sand boxes, nothing for kids to do. When most families book sites in a campground, they try to get close to all the amenities and over here all we have is a nice new bath house/laundry within an easy walking distance from the back of our coach. Oh, and very few kids (Yay!)

The first day here we found out the a/c in the car doesn’t work. We asked Bobbie at the gatehouse if she knew a trustworthy mechanic in Burkesville (18 mile’s away) because she told us she lives there. She recommended “Daryl’s Place” up the road a piece.

I took the car up there and he put freon in the system and charged me $16 .. Happy Camper

We drove 18 miles the other way to Albany where I found a Blue Cellular store and bought a new SIM card for my phone (with a new number) so now my phone works here in the park and throughout the region. It’s a pay-as-you-go plan with no contract at $35 a month. So once again .. Happy Camper

Now that I have a phone that works here I could log on to Amazon and order a DISH receiver package. We’ve had DISH before but the outdoor antenna broke and we stopped using it once we were able to get unlimited data with Visible phone service and then we could stream all our TV and other web use with no data cap and no throttling. This is the first place in the country that we’ve found that Visible service doesn’t work. And my new $35/month phone is capped at 4 gig/month so we can’t use that for streaming or uploading pictures.

But in any event, Monday the DISH package should be here and then Kathy will be a Happy Camper!

We made a commitment to start walking regularly once we arrived. So far so good. The campground is a large irregular shaped loop with two rather large and steep hills. (Rough on the knees!)

The loop is just under 3500 steps or about 1.5 miles and we’ve managed (so far) to do that once in the morning and once.again in the evening. Wish us luck!

We’ve not started work yet. The park manager met us Wednesday when we arrive and told us to relax, find our way around, and she’d get with us on Monday, so my next post will be a little about what the job entails.

Just A Sleepy Little Town

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Animals, Food, Friends, Learning, Sightseeing, Traveling

After our three days and nights at the Sweetwater Events Center (fair grounds @ Rock Springs Wyoming) we made our way further east on I-80 and then up U.S. 287 through Muddy Gap and around Casper, then up I-25 to Powder River Campgrounds at Kaycee, Wyoming.

Honestly, the only reason we went to Kaycee was because the camping was cheap, it would be a full hook-up site, and they had a laundry. We are members of Passport America and the PA web site showed Kaycee as the closest member park and as a result we are able to stay for $20/night which is 1/2 the normal non-member rate of $40 nightly.

There was one other camper there, but we never saw any occupants

We were cheerily welcomed by the on-site park manager Deneene and she welcomed us to the area, gave us a full hook-up pull-through site and proceeded to tell us a little about the town and especially the Bronc Riding School that would be happening the next two days across the street at the local fair grounds.

Turns out that Kaycee is famous for producing professional rodeo stars – over a dozen have come from this sleepy little town to go on to earn their living as professional national rodeo stars.

Here’s an excerpt from a local paper explaining the phenomenon;

The following is an excerpt from PATRICK SCHMIEDT Star-Tribune staff writer Jul 13, 2006

Blend a supportive community, a heavy dose of history and a simple case of boredom, and it shouldn’t have been too surprising to see five Kaycee competitors in Wednesday’s performance at the Central Wyoming Rodeo.

The small town of about 250 people an hour north of Casper has produced more successful cowboys than most towns 100 times its size. But none of the five competitors in Wednesday’s performance has completely figured out why.

Morgan Forbes, a 23-year-old saddle bronc rider looking for a return trip to the National Finals Rodeo, attributes the success of Kaycee cowboys, in part, to boredom.

“There’s not much else to do out in Kaycee,” he said.

As for Jeremy Ivie, who, at 29, moved to Kaycee five years ago from Duchesne, Utah, it’s all the “old guys” in town who help foster rodeo success. After all, the names of rodeo families in and around the town are familiar in rodeo circles: Forbes. Graves. LeDoux. Sandvick. Scolari. Shepperson. Orchard. Jarrard. Latham.

Dusty Orchard, a 25-year-old bull rider, said the town is a “coffee shop,” where the residents applaud when a hometown cowboy does well and offer a twinkle-eyed razzing when there is more disappointment than success.

Or, as Orchard suggested, it may be because Kaycee doesn’t have a football team to rally behind. Instead, the community rallies around rodeo.

Actually, it’s a combination of those ingredients that blend the perfect atmosphere for the sport, an atmosphere that has helped to produce about a dozen competitors – around five percent of the town’s residents – solid enough to maintain current careers on the professional rodeo circuit.

“If you want to rodeo, it’s the greatest place in the world to grow up,” said saddle bronc rider Sandy Forbes, Morgan’s older brother. ” … It’s just what we do.”

“If you’re wanting to be somewhere that supports rodeo, that’s the town,” she said.

We decided to stay another night and that afternoon after the Bronc School an Airstream trailer pulled in next to us and we met Angie and Bunny who were traveling to Yellowstone (to work) from Indiana. We enjoyed a nice chicken dinner with them that night at a local restaurant.

  • Kathy in the laundry
  • The “Invasion” bar and cafe
  • Our breakfast menu next morning
  • My bacon ‘n cheese omelette
  • Statue of Chris LeDoux
  • Statue memorializing Chris LeDoux
  • The Village Park honoring local hero Chris LeDoux
  • Our new friends Angie & Bunny (and dog)

It was a real treat for these two city-slickers lemme tell ‘ya. We got to see a “stampede” of a hundred horses go by us on the bridge that we could’ve reached out and touched. Add to that watching these young kids get bucked off the broncs as their seniors trained them to ride ’em.

Check out the video below for the full story.

Thanks for riding along. We appreciate that you stop to take the time to read and come along with us on our adventure. Please leave a comment or two down the page in the comments section – What do you think of these kids being bucked off the horse?

The Pony Express – Very Impressive

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Animals, Sightseeing

Kathy and I took another “day trip” this past week.  This is just one of the wonderful things about our location (Camp Verde) in Arizona.  There is so much to see and so many different landscapes within just a short drive in the car.

This time we decided to head east and then north a bit into “high country” to see some snow and check out the towns we see mentioned on the 6 o’clock news weather report.

Our elevation here at Camp Verde is 3146′ while Payson is at 4890′ and Show Low is at 6345′ above sea level.  It was a 65 degree afternoon here while in Show Low the high that afternoon barely got to 50 degrees.

We checked out the lake and the dam at Show Low Lake, we visited the Allen Severson Wetland area, and stopped to check out a really cool store with a lot of woodcarvings  and beautiful hand crafted furniture.  The store was called Wild Woods Furniture and Gifts.

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But the best part of the trip came totally by surprise.  As we were headed back west from Snowflake to Payson, we came across men on horseback escorted by police along state routes.  I remembered seeing a story on the morning news that this was the week when, every year The Hashknife Pony Express makes its ride every January/February traveling 200 miles from Holbrook to Scottsdale, Arizona, and delivering 20,000 first-class letters by horseback. The ride is led by the Navajo County Hashknife Sheriff’s Posse. More than two dozen riders in authentic cowboy clothing carry the mail, relaying the bags along the route. The ride ends in Scottsdale with the ending ceremony at the Museum Of The West on Marshall Way.

The video below shows the Hashknife Pony Express just taking off again after a short rest at a local shopping mall parking lot.  Cowboy hats, chaps, boots, and spurs …