Turtle took on the West....CO, WY & SD

I recently visited CO, WY & SD. It was awesome! I flew into Denver Saturday night then hit the road early Sunday morning where we made our way through WY and into SD. Driving through WY was windy, brown and boring. (Here's a photo of the long road we traveled along through WY).

Once we crossed into SD the drive thru the Blackhills National Forest was much more scenic. We spent the first part of the day on Monday checking out Mt. Rushmore & Crazy Horse. Then we were back on the road to WY & CO.

While en route back thru WY, we made it our mission to find "Mother Featherlegs". We had tried to locate her the day before when we traveled through the lovely metropolis of Lusk, WY but no such luck. The history of Mother Featherlegs is that she was known throughout the area in and around Lusk, WY way back in the day (1800's) for providing sex, whiskey & gambling (i.e. running a whorehouse). She was given her name due to the ruffled underpants she wore. She's the only known monument in the United States honoring a prostitute. You can read more about the history of Mother Featherlegs here.

As we attempted to locate her for the 2nd time around we instead dead ended onto a ranch (5600 acres worth of ranch that is) owned by a very friendly local rancher who chatted it up w/ us and directed us to where we needed to go to find ol' Mother Featherlegs. But not before showing us the elk that his son had just killed.

We set back out on our journey and 10+ miles later on the other side of the ranch that we just randomly visited, we found her....MOTHER FEATHERLEGS!!! 3rd times a charm.....Below is a pic of the monument dedicated to her & a picture of the road in the middle of nowhere WY that you travel on to get to her. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!

We got back into CO late Monday night with the intention of getting up early to hike a 14fter all day on Tuesday. However, snow put a damper on that plan as did our own exhaustion so we opted for checking out the Garden of the Gods and Red Rocks instead. It was a quick, easy hike but nothing to rave about. Red Rocks was cool to see and I climbed all the stairs from the bottom to the top without passing out. HA!

My time out west was great. I enjoyed every minute of it & look forward to going back one day for many more adventures. On another exciting note, my trip out west allowed me to feast on some GF goodness. One night I ate @ a Mexican place w/ a dedicated GF menu & the last night I was there I ate at an Italian place w/ a dedicated menu. I admit, I was quite giddy over the loaf of GF bread complete w/ oil/vinegar to dip it in. SO AWESOME!