As I mentioned in the last post, we were taking today to head up to Cheyenne, the biggest city and State Capital of Wyoming, to the north of Colorado. This was largely thanks to (or the fault of?) Douglas Coupland’s novel ‘Miss Wyoming’. The cast for today’s intrepid adventure was vegan Chris, vegetarian Natalie, and gluten-free me.
Before we set off, we had to have brunch (that’s a very ‘Caroline’ word right there), and given our group’s wild dietary differences, we headed to some cafe that catered for all three. They had strange, elaborate contraptions for peppermint tea, and tofu schnitzel, which I chose purely based on its name alone.
After only a couple of hours drive we arrived in Wyoming.
What you see here is about all you get. The town was really weird. Natalie stopped by a Starbucks to get her hourly caffeine injection, and the atmosphere was bizarre. If you’ve ever seen the film Hot Fuzz with the townspeople all pretending to read books, study, work… whilst all the time they’re really looking at everybody else with shifty eyes… then you’ve pretty much got a good idea of how it was. It could well have been a front for some white supremacist movement actually.
I saw this shirt in what appeared to be a cafe.
I think it’d suit me.
Ever been in a real, honest-to-God cowboy shop?
There are lots of hats.
Expensive hats.
… as well as lots of expensive boots.
Natalie suggested that Chris should enquire about the availability of some vegan boots. I didn’t think this was the best idea. The truck with the pitchforks that we actually really did see outside the shop would probably be used to run us out of town.
The highlight has to be the greeting card section that was dedicated to ‘horse sympathy’ cards. No picture of that I’m afraid; I was too terrified of being spotted as an outsider.
Some woman actually asked Chris where he was from, and walked off without saying a word when he told her he lived in Denver.
So weird.
There were some 8 foot cowboy boots dotted around the place though.
I’ll never look at the Miss Wyoming novel the same way again.