Terry and I spend a lot of time online looking for strange and unusual experiences along the American byways.  Yesterday, when Georgia drove from Rifle to visit her sister Paula in Cheyenne, I fired up my motorcycle and took the slow road, to Rawlins, Wyoming and then to Medicine Bow, Laramie and then to Cheyenne.

There were two Scenic Wonders along the route, according to our favorite online resource, Roadside America.  I left I-80 and took the old highway, US 30, to Medicine Bow, home of the Virginian Hotel which served up a tolerable ham (one thin slice) and vegetable (two slices of cabbage leaf) soup, and coffee.  Seven miles east, one comes across the

Fossil Museum

It appeared in one of Ripley’s Believe It or Not cartoons as “the oldest cabin in the world” and “the building that walked.”    The cabin was built in 1932 to attract tourists to a fuel station, and was constructed of 5,796 fossilized dinosaur bones.

The owner died in 1947, and business fell off dramatically when I-80 was constructed to the south.  The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but that wasn’t enough to keep the tourists coming, and it was closed…but not abandoned.  A couple of security cameras still stand watch.  The only sound is the very occasional car driving by on US 30, and the ever present wind whistling though the prairie.

According to Wikipedia, the museum is for sale and somebody may move it to North Carolina.

Lincoln Highway

US 30 was the country’s first transcontinental road, completed over 100 years ago.  Its route ran from Times Square to San Francisco, and the highest point just outside of Laramie, is marked by a gigantic head of Abraham Lincoln on top of a stone spire, overlooking the roadway and the nearby memorial to the president of Packard Motor Car Company who spearheaded construction of the highway.  A loop of this highway ran through Colorado for a few years, but was discontinued in 1928.