Franklinsanity

Belatedly:  we passed through Cheyenne after an 11 hour sprint through Nebraska. Our friendly dog app told us the best hotel in terms of food, location and canine permissiveness was the “historic” Plains Hotel.

Reviewa told us the place had a lot of retro charm and that the rooms and bathrooms were quite small.  The hotel’s hold music informed us proudly that the hotel had just undergone a major renovation – in 2002.

We called many other hotels. No love, at least for dogs.

So the Plains it was!  What an experience.  The place has definitely seen better days.  I found it kind of cool, in the way that a small-town natural history museum is cool, or perhaps a local farm’s taxidermy exhibit.  It’s a slice of faded or fading Americana…massive lobby; with probably a quarter acre of carefully tiled floor.  In those tiny hexagonal tiles.  Which is now buckled, so that when you push a luggage cart over it, it wobbles.

The bar here, btw, is called the Wig Wam.

The rooms weren’t that small – the bathrooms were.  Our sink was actually in our room.  And the bathroom was around the size of a closet.  The rooms and halls looked like something out of the Shining…faded, once-fancy carpets, odd old fixtures and moldings.  The die-cast-metal cowboy molds on the walls with room numbers were a nice touch.

I don’t think any of us slept too well.

Still, the next morning, I enjoyed an early walk with the dogs over the bridge across the train depot.  Awesome Wife found a hipster coffee joint that made great smoothies. And the kids and I had a great breakfast in the nearly empty, massive, leather-and-Western-stitched booths.

All in all, I was amused if slightly paranoid the whole time (we saw very few people; and those we did see were aging-but-still-fierce bikers.  The rest of the family seemed BEmused and also on edge.  So:  glad we passed through, not sure how much longer we wanted to stay.  Though in fairness, our traveling circus didn’t give the town much of a chance to show itself off.

Next time!