The land between Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming, offers a crazy quilt of textures and colors. If you're traveling on Interstate 80 east out of Laramie, detour onto Wyoming 210 and you'll crest an 8,640-foot summit and pass through a world that includes fanciful rock shapes and lakes with great hiking, picnicking, fishing, and boating.
Wyoming 210 is also called Happy Jack Road after Happy Jack Hollingsworth, a rancher and logger who earned his moniker because he sang while he worked. The 38-mile road is also known for wildflower displays.
From the summit rest area and the Lincoln Monument, a 12-foot-high bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln (7 miles east of Laramie; exit 323 off I-80), head east onto Happy Jack Road as it sweeps up and over the green Laramie Mountains. Soon the landscape alters from timbered hillside to open grassland and wildflowers.
The road weaves across a portion of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. Within a few miles, a well-signed gravel side road (FDR 719) leads to the Happy Jack Recreation Area, great for a picnic or hike.
Just 10 miles east of the Lincoln Monument is the turnoff onto the slow but scenic Vedauwoo Glen Road (FDR 700), which leads past the Vedauwoo (vee-dah-voo) Recreation Area. This region of otherworldly granite formations provides ample diversity for rock climbers. The jumbled rocks, the result of ancient earth fractures, are weathered into shapes: You might picture them as lizards, turtles, or even faces. Scramble around on easy day-hike trails or bring your mountain bike. (For access to Vedauwoo alone, the easiest way is directly off I-80.)
Continue east on Happy Jack Road, and about midway along you'll reach the largest recreation area in the region, Curt Gowdy State Park. It's a magnet for fishing and boating (at Crystal Lake and Granite reservoirs).
From mid-June through July, you should see profuse wildflowers, from the dainty, lavender pasque flowers to penstemons in shades of blue and purple. Happy Jack Road drops down through ranch country before ending in Cheyenne.
