My week in Wyoming

I NEVER pictured myself going to Wyoming (of course I thought the same thing about Nebraska and Iowa and look at me now).  Not that it's a bad place (in fact it's beautiful!), I just never really saw myself going there for anything.  In late June we found out that we won a project for the National Guard.  I and a co-worker were going to plan a training conference for them in Laramie, WY.  It was a scramble for 6 weeks.  We had almost no time to get it all planned and do everything else we needed to.  Remember my post about a bad review?  That was for this project.  Somehow she and I pulled it all off and on the 15th we headed for Laramie to pull off the conference.  What a week.  I worked almost 90 HOURS!!! It was a LOT of work, but we had a lot of fun too.

Sunday, we traveled and started registration for the group that was coming in for their field trip the next day.  When that was over, my co-worker, the project manager, our two AV guys that we brought from our Omaha office, and I went out to dinner to plan for the week.  On Monday we started super early with registration and we had to get the field trip onto busses for their all day field trip.  After that, I spent the rest of my day at the registration table (SO BORING!!) checking in the rest of the arrivals throughout the day and then making sure everything in the conference area was all set up and ready for the next day.  Oh, and we also had a big thunderstorm that day - this will make more sense in a moment...
On Tuesday the conference started, we went almost problem free, except for when the power went out.  Ugh!  At first I thought it was one of us that hit the lights since we were standing in the back of the room at the time, but when I ran out into the hallway - everything out there was off too.  The lead WY Lt.Con. cracked a joke about how they just got power last week in Laramie and they're still working out the kinks - he was a really funny guy.  When the power came back on, the hotel AV guy made a comment like, "well, I hope that doesn't keep happening like usual".  I asked him why would it do that and his reply was, "because it stormed yesterday and the power goes out - that's what happens with bad storms".  Um, okay, but wasn't the storm LAST NIGHT?  Weird WY guy....

Color Guard kids...they did such a good job

That evening we had to run an icebreaker social for the group, so my co-worker and I left in the afternoon to make sure everything was ready for that.  It was held at this old mansion/girls school.  I was a really nice place (for Laramie).

On Wednesday, we had another problem-free day at the conference.  In fact it was going so well, the WY contract manager decided it was my turn to go learn how to shoot-em up! (My co-worker got to do a bunch of shooting on the field trip while I was stuck at the hotel). 

We didn't get pictures of her shootin' it up though - so we had to stage this.

Mr. W took another lady and I out into the middle of NOWHERE and gave us a gun saftey course (he's also an NRA instructor as well as in a single action shooter society).  Not one of my most brightest moments - as I started losing bars on my phone I started getting really uneasy about being out there with no way to report a problem (I didn't know this guy - how did I know I wasn't going out to rot in WY at the shooting range?)  All went well though and we ended up shooting SEVEN different kinds of guns.  By the time we got through the peacemakers and other guns I was a little gun happy with the semi-automatic (his conceal-carry piece) he let us shoot  - whoops.

Seriously NEVER pictured myself doing this

Wednesday evening we got off early and really should have gone to bed early, but no...we (my co-worker and I) decided to go out for a steak dinner (not as good as the beef in my freezer), then had some (way too many) drinks in the hotel bar (we invited the AV guys and our PM down - she is such a trip - I'd love to work with her again) and then we still didn't end the night, we went to the Library when that bar closed.  Such a bad idea - didn't go to bed until like 12:30 :(

Thursday morning was rough, but we survived another successful conference day.  Thursday evening we threw a banquet for the group at an old territorial prison.  This is the only prison that ever held Butch Cassidy (he was imprisoned there for almost 2 years).  Because the weather was not so good, the museum actually let the group eat in the mess hall - such a treat for these cultural resources people.  We had a group of performers come in and they even attempted to hang the head National Guard lady :)

Searching out their hangin' victim

Picture of a picture of the prison

The prison was actually pretty creepy - only two people died there during the 30 years it was open, but they have all of these huge pictures of the convicts hanging up and their eyes were really creepy.  In fact, the place has had real ghost hunters come through it and film.  One of the guys that died haunts the place.  At the end of the night, the park ranger let our team do a "ghost hunt".  So, my co-worker, one of the AV guys (he was totally into the ghost hunting), our PM, and I started walking around in the dark.  First, my co-worker freaked out after a few minutes and bailed for the door.  We walked around some more and recorded our silly-butts (I'll add the recording later).  The PM started freaking out and there was NO WAY I was going to stay in there without her, so we bailed for the door.  Our AV guy stayed in a little longer and SWEARS he heard something.  Such a goof.
Friday we wrapped up the conference and packed up.  My co-worker and I drove back down to Denver to catch our plane (too bad we couldn't get on an earlier one), but she gave me a tour of town and we had a nice early dinner with one of her friends.
Scenery from the week:

There's still snow ontop of the mountain!!

 So Wyoming was fun and really beautiful, but there's no place like home and I was so happy to be back!