It’s been almost precisely two weeks since my last blog post, which I understand can be a bit jarring, considering I had previously been blogging once every few days with new travel updates. I’ve had a few people message me to make sure I’m still alive and didn’t randomly fall off a mountain in Colorado; I highly doubt I would be clumsy enough to put myself in a situation where such a thing would happen, but regardless, I appreciate the con­cern.

Since leaving Utah, I made my way across Colorado and made a few stops, specifically in the Grand Junction, Denver, and Fort Collins–Loveland areas. As a whole, Colorado is probably my favorite state, but my two weeks spent in Col­orado this time around wasn’t exactly that exciting, for a handful of reasons:

1. I was going to split up my trip some more and spend some time in the mountains, but I failed to realize that it still regularly blizzards in the Col­orado mountains in March, so I had to shuffle things around as to not have to drive across the elevation changes of I-70 in a snowstorm. I end­ed up going straight from Grand Junction to Denver in a single drive on a day that I knew would be dry.

2. Even not in the mountains, it still regularly snows in Colorado in March, so I got snowed in on more days than I would have liked. Hiking is a bit difficult in the snow, and even when it’s not snowing, the below-freezing temperatures turned a lot of the hiking trails I wanted to visit into ice skating rinks. Yes, I could’ve done some indoor tourist activities, but I mostly just didn’t want to bother taking the risk of driving through several inches of snow, getting in a collision, and getting stuck. That’s already bad enough for a normal person, but it’s especially bad when you’re a nomad living out of hotel rooms and heavily reliant on your vehicle.

3. Tempo Games is staffing up really hard right now with our new Series B investment funding in order to ramp up production on The Bazaar. That means that I, as the one who handles all of corporate operations, am overloaded and buried in work. Not only do I need to take care of post-in­vestment legal tasks, but I also need to handle all the human resources and legal aspects of all our new hires. A majority of the past two weeks have been spent working inhuman hours in an attempt to keep the company moving.

4. In the little free time that I did have, I decided to relax and rest up for a bit, considering I had just visited three major national parks and gone on a handful of good hikes. I caught up on some Final Fantasy XIV content, read some ebooks, and took my truck in for an oil change and routine maintenance. It was nice leaving the blinds open, turning on a virtual fireplace on the hotel TV, turning on a dim light, and staying cozy indoors while watching the snow fall outside.

 
After the fairly uneventful stay in Colorado, I made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming. For my first activity of the city, I decided to go to the Cheyenne Depot Museum. When I first arrived in Cheyenne, my hotel asked for a bit more time to clean and get my room ready, as they were sold out the previous night due to… you guessed it, an unexpected snowstorm that shut down interstates.

While waiting for housekeeping to wrap up, I was originally planning on going for a walk on a local greenway, but decided against it because of how windy it was. Instead, I decided an indoor activity would be better, and thought it would be a great day to learn about trains, which apparently is some­thing that Cheyenne is notably known for.

The location of the museum was actually quite convenient, as if you were patient, you would be able to see real trains crossing on the train tracks di­rectly behind the museum. There were no decommissioned trains in the museum itself, so this was actually one of the only ways to see a real train at the train museum—which is unfortunate, but reasonable, as having a worthwhile display of real trains would mean the scale of the museum would have to be astronomically larger.

One of my favorite things about the museum was the model train exhibit on the second floor. Unfortunately, the actual model train didn’t appear to be operating, but the display itself was still very impressive—it had great attention to detail, and according to some of the labels, it appears like it was mod­eled after real areas that were symbolic and significant to the train industry.

With the time that I’ve spent in Cheyenne so far, I think it’s actually a surprisingly nice and pleasant city.

Downtown Cheyenne feels like a suburb in the metropolitan area of a larger city. Everyone I’ve encountered was very kind (which tends to be a char­ac­ter­is­tic of less-populous areas in general), the drivers are respectful and non-aggressive, it’s still large enough that all the major chain stores and res­tau­rants are still conveniently present, and the air quality was pure.

Another intriguing thing I noticed about Cheyenne was the heavy police presence—every time I would drive out, I would see several law enforcement vehicles on the road. I imagine a small city like Cheyenne doesn’t have much crime, so it appears like Cheyenne takes a very patrol-oriented and com­mu­ni­ty policing philosophy, ensuring that they have good active coverage of the city to ensure that it remains peaceful.

The last time I was in Wyoming, I drove across Interstate 80, spent some time in Rawlins, then connected onto U.S. Route 287 from Laramie and headed down to Fort Collins, so I didn’t have an opportunity to visit Cheyenne. This isn’t going to be my last stay in Wyoming either—I’ll be skirting around Wyoming to visit Nebraska and South Dakota, then cutting back through the northeastern corner of Wyoming again on my way to Montana.