After leaving the world wide, international headquarters of EarthRoamer we continued on the Cheyenne.
I had been trying for a couple of days to find a Camping World, RV repair shop or medium duty truck shop that could take a look at the brakes on the “Enterprise”. If you have an RV repair shop you could make a fortune. Every one I called was booked for at least 2 weeks, some even more. I finally found Graber’s in Cheyenne who said they’d take a look, but no promises on repair.
The brakes were squeaking quite a bit and although they only had about 15,000 miles on them I was concerned that all the mountain driving and towing the Jeep may have worn them out prematurely. I thought I was hearing the brake indicators already.
Somewhere back in Banff my tow brakes on the Jeep stopped working. I don’t know how long I had been driving through mountainous terrain with only the RV brakes. Then it took a couple of weeks before I had the time to figure out what was wrong. As it turns out the actuator that pulls the brake pedal had come loose from the cable attaching it to the firewall. Also, the vacuum tube that activates the actuator had slipped out of its connector. I was able to easily fix this once I understood what had gone wrong.
Not knowing how much wear and tear that extra braking may have caused I took it to Graber’s. I used my leveling jacks to manually lift the RV off the ground (pretty cool) and allow their tech to crawl underneath and examine the brakes. Fortunately the brakes still looked good and after a good cleaning with brake cleaner all was fine and all for free. If you’re ever in Cheyenne and need some RV or other repair, go to Graber’s (apparently no relation to a former colleague of mine)!
Feeling better about my brakes we spent the day poking around Cheyenne. We visited the Big Boy Steam Engine. The world’s largest steam locomotive. I have it from inside, local sources that the city of Cheyenne is secretly working on repairing and making usable a second Big Boy Steam Engine that they will use in town (for tourists or something).
Here’s a picture of the original Big Boy and me testing out my new, bluetooth, remote control, camera button!
The next day went we to Fort Laramie! Finally! After listening to all the Fort Laramie radio shows I’d downloaded I had a definite idea in my mind what the fort would be like. I was wrong. I thought there would be a big wall all the way around made out of pine trees with pointed tops. Nope, no walls at all, but surrounded on two sides by the Platte and Laramie rivers.
The fort is cool and fun to visit. The rivers were named by old french trappers. The “Platte” river because it was flat like the flat top of a plateau or a flat plate (something?) and the “Laramie” was named after a fallen fellow trapper named Jacques La Ramie (roll the ‘RRRR”). La Ramie became Laramie over time (I think I’m remembering this right… google it if you want to be certain).
The Barracks.
Some standard equipment for the fort.
Parade grounds
Officers Quarters
Saloon (where all the cool cowboy fights took place)
I said, “Bar keep! Give me a double root beer! On the rocks! In a dirty glass!!”
The bar keep was a nice guy. They actually do sell root beer there in the saloon.
The Guard House (Where you went after too much root beer)
After Fort Laramie we stopped by the famous Oregon Trail Wagon Tracks that are still visible in the rock today.
This is kind of awesome.
You’ve probably seen pictures of these ruts in your history books, but you’ve never seen a picture of the famous Oregon Trail ruts with my dog sitting on them!
Next… Yellowstone!!! Yeah!!