From Denver, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah — Three Quick House Museum Stops

Thanksgiving:  We had another long day of driving ahead —

532 miles to Salt Lake City.

We considered imposing on our hosts — “Hey!  Why not invite us to Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family!” — to stay another day and really see the sites.  But frankly, I’m not that excited about house museums.

Thanksgiving week is perhaps not the best time to tour house museums because they’re not so much open as they are closed.  In some ways, this was helpful — at this point in the trip Susie wanted nothing more than to be out of the car, and Hazel had conceded defeat.  In other ways, well, we didn’t get to go inside too many museums.

Regardless, we hit the road and stopped by three museums en route to Salt Lake.

First, the home of “Unsinkable” Molly Brown.

Fans of the film Titanic will no doubt remember Molly Margaret Brown as the unforgettable something something.  I still haven’t seen that one.

The exterior was surprisingly graphic.

Just down the street was the Byers-Evans House Museum.

It had decidedly less frontal nudity than the Molly Brown House.  Both houses have what looks like an excellent location: the heart of the Golden Triangle Museum District.  I’ll have to go back.

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Farther up the road, we looked for the Historic Governor’s Mansion in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Unfortunately, I really had to go to the bathroom, so we gave up and headed straight to Laramie.  We stumbled upon the Historic Ivinson Mansion.

It’s the home of the Laramie Plains Museum.

By this point it was snowing and getting dark, and we were so over Wyoming.

Not far before the Utah line we stopped at the Flying J in Rock Springs for Thanksgiving dinner.

We had grilled chicken sandwiches.  They were reasonable.

Topics Discussed: Bailey White’s Thanksgiving Stories on NPR, How Butch Cassidy Was a Real Dude Surprisingly Enough