Remember That Time I Went Hiking in Casper...

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, 65 degrees and sunny; and I was off work.  Perfect for being outdoors.  Hooray!  I decided that I must get out and do a little hiking.  I read online about a place in Casper that had a 4.5 mile trail with views of falls.  Wonderful.  I packed up my back pack and headed out.  

What I failed to take into account was that it is still March.  The closer I got, the more snow there was still piled up.  

Still, I decided to persevere because it was stunning.

Then I reached this point:

(That's a corner of a bench buried in the snow on the left)

And beyond that it got a little sketchy on where the trail actually was, so I decided that I will just have to come back this summer and try again.  

The good news is that there are plenty of things to do in Casper, so my trip was not in vain.

I ended up going to the Fort Caspar Museum and Historic Site.  

Fort Caspar is located on the North Platte River and was used  in the 1850s and 60s.  The Oregon, Mormon Pioneer, California, Pony Express, and transcontinental telegraph trails all crossed the river there. 

The Fort has been reconstructed as it would have been in 1865 and there is a small museum.  Admission is only $1.50!  During the summer the buildings are open and you can go inside and see how life used to be. But it is only March after all, so everything was closed up.  Still, I think it was worth visiting.

The museum was interesting and had a lot of interactive displays, but I don't want to make this post super long so I'm just going to share a couple of things that I thought were pretty entertaining from the Cabinets of Curiosities display.

A dress made out of newsprint, an article from the 1960s telling women to come to Casper if they are looking for a husband since there were so many available bachelors, and...

 a mustache cup. 

That's right, a cup fashioned especially for mustache wearers to keep the hot drinks from melting their mustache wax...why don't they make these anymore?

Even though I didn't get to hike, my day in Casper was not wasted.  Can't wait to go back when the weather is more cooperative!