Constant Reader knows I never, ever get tired of going to Laramie. Not the miles of nothing between here and Medicine Bow; not the town of Rock River, which I'd just like to buy all of; not even Bosler, which just means we're really close.

So we had a whole weekend off together, the friend and me, and while Laramie would have been just dandy with me, even without a game, we headed in a different direction, to explore in a different way a place we'd been separately a couple of lives ago but not together.

I chose the accommodations because I knew exactly where I wanted to stay. They were "historical," which means a really big price, arrived at by climbing not one but two hefty flights of ornate, "historical" staircases.

There were no windows in the rooms but skylights, accompanied by old-fashioned, overhead ceiling lights. It was quaint and delightful and more recently installed air conditioning, more powerful in some areas of the rooms than others, saved us.

My only complaint about the room was that there was a television. If it's historical, there just shouldn't be one, especially when it's not football season.

We watched a gunfight -- once the whole thing and once just the end -- and the friend, a huge western history buff, knew immediately the entire supporting cast, as well as Buffalo Bill Cody and Calamity Jane.

By the second night, the motorcyclists sitting behind us and the friend were repeating movie lines verbatim and questioning slight deviations in the locals' script. That got pretty annoying pretty quick, but in a hilarious kind of way.

We chuckled that Calamity Jane's license plate on her big ol' modern truck is "CALAM."

I told Buffalo Bill that I liked his beautiful fringed buckskin jacket and he said, "Thanks, it cost me a horse."

I laughed and he said, "no, a real one."

We shopped and shopped and shopped, looking and marveling at the price tags far more than buying.

I wanted a cute long-sleeved T-shirt made out of a really unusual fabric with Wyoming in white embroidered script on the front, a brilliant Indian paintbrush as an exclamation point and a rhinestone dotting the "i" in Wyoming.

The friend thought that was a ridiculous idea because I live here. Well, yeah, but you can't ever have enough "dressy" Wyoming stuff, right?

We took a drive out of town where Peggy Jane the Mom and Fritz the Dad once owned riverfront property. The land remains largely undeveloped, but Peggy Jane guided us by phone and the friend is sure we found the right spot. Sitting there, I was able to tell him what their wonderful retirement plans had been.

We went to Wal-Mart to buy golf balls and I taught the friend how to use the self checkout. We played golf and I even managed to sort of hit the ball a time or two.

I saw my first live rattlesnake very close up and rattling.

We ate wonderful meals, including one at a place with live music. That just never happens often enough anymore.

On the return trip, we took a different route on a road where I had never been to places I had never been.

Repeats in life are a good thing. Sometimes, taking a new road, however, is a great thing.

Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520; sallyann.shurmur@casperstartribune.net or read her online at www.casperstartribune.net/dishin

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