Laramie Geology Museum

January 29th, 2012

I had heard about the Laramie Geology Museum from a friend at work and it sounded like a nice place to visit on a day when we didn't have anything else going on, so we decided on a Sunday morning to go for a drive up to Wyoming to check it out. It was about an hour and 15 minutes to get there from Fort Collins. It took us quite a bit of driving around campus to finally find the museum entrance. Part of the problem was that the area near the Geology building was under construction so it was hard to see where the correct building was.

Once we did get into the right building, we were greeted with some nice dinosaur skeletons. 

Large dinos

We walked around the various exhibits.  They had a lot of fossils, but also a really cool mineral room with a bunch of different minerals that fluoresce under UV light.  Tyler thought that room was pretty cool.  He also really liked seeing the various different types of dinosaurs they had there.

Tyler by the Triceratops

We bought Tyler a t-shirt to help support the museum.  The museum is free, but they've had some funding issues over the last several years, so we wanted to help them a little bit since we all enjoyed our visit.  We even got to meet a graduate student who was working on some fossil bones that had recently been discovered when a utility company was working on installing a new natural gas pipeline nearby. 

We then grabbed a quick lunch and took the long way home.  I wanted to stop and check out an area called Vedauwoo that is just off the interstate between Laramie and Cheyenne.  It turns out, January isn't a good time of year to visit as it was completely snowed in.  We even saw a big 4 wheel drive truck that had gotten stuck in a snow drift.  We wisely parked the Corolla before the deep snow started and took a quick walk around to see what the area was like.  It was supposed to be in the mid 60's in Fort Collins, but when we got to Wyoming it was only in the 30's and very windy, so we didn't spend too much time walking around as we weren't prepared for the cold.

These rocks reminded us a lot of Castle Hill in New Zealand, but with snow

We hurried back to the car and snapped a couple of quick pictures of the area that we want to check out in the summer.  The area is known for its excellent rock climbing, so we'll definitely come back to see the climbers when the snow is gone.


Vedauwoo between Laramie and Cheyenne

We drove to Cheyenne and stopped at the Sierra Trading Post outlet, but didn't see anything we needed, so we headed back to Fort Collins for dinner.

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