Eating Our Way Through Frontier Days

Well I will close out my serious of posts about our ambitious roadtrip in July 2025 to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska with a post about where the roadtrip adventures began – in Cheyenne Wyoming.

Before we headed to Frontier Days in Cheyenne, we wandered around downtown Cheyenne, stopping at the famous The Wrangler western store.

And being met with the largest cowboy boot selection I’ve ever seen:

John was a sport and tried on some boots which went so nicely with his shorts (not! ha!):

No sorry, as fetching as they looked, he did not leave the store with them.

Back outside there was a giant cowboy boot on display painted with western scenes:

To give perspective of how big the boot is here I am standing next to it and I am around 5′ 11″:

Then we headed to Frontier Days and ate our way through the Fairgrounds, ha!

It all began with a corn dog (I think I literally squealed with delight when I saw the corn dog booth as I hadn’t had one in like 8 years):

Then we found a booth with VERY amazing brisket birria tacos! They were so good we shared a second serving.

We of course had to get some lemonade to share in a commemorative cup when this booth, shaped like a lemon lured us over:

Yes we were on the verge of needing to roll ourselves out of the fairgrounds if we kept going, so we just admired the rest of the food from afar. Here a little gallery of some of the POOR NUTRITIONAL CHOICES we could have kept making 😉 :

Some of the foods sound like serious indigestion but they are probably fun to eat…

Fair Food makes me laugh – there is definitely some sort of competition to serve the craziest food that you’d never eat in your daily life. And of course they had things like deep fried Twinkies and deep fried Oreos. I am curious about the Pickle Pizza – I wish I could have sampled just a little of it to satisfy my curiosity!

After filling our tummies we headed to see the some of the annual Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. I was good for about an hour and that was enough rodeo for me, I am not a big rodeo person. I can’t help myself I always start feeling bad for the animals like the little calves getting roped and tied. I know, I know, I’d never make it on the American Frontier! The bull riding was fun to watch for a while but then I started thinking about the bulls who didn’t want humans on their backs.

When I lived in Houston, Texas in the late 1980s to late 1990s, we used to go to the Houston Livestock and Rodeo once a year. I mainly went to see the livestock and I enjoyed seeing all the 4-H farm kids showing off their animals.

Then one year we went I absolutely fell in love with the cutest cow with fluffy ears. I was obsessed with this cow. I wanted to move to a farm and have a cow like that.

What a vaguely remember the cow looked like (image credit Depositphotos)

My late husband Terry said to me: “Yes we could adopt it and name it ‘Hamburger'”.

Oh no I realized – my sweet fluffy eared new friend was going to become a yummy burger someday! After that I stopped wanting to go to the livestock show – ha!

(I was a Vegetarian for a while when I was in my late teens/early 20s but bacon and the smell of burgers on the grill made lured me back to being an Omnivore…)

Oh so back to the Cheyenne Frontiers Day Rodeo – there was one moment during my brief time at the rodeo that captured by heart. The competition opened with a Native American/Lakota horse blessing by Mo-Brings-Plenty, a member of the Lakota Tribe who was also the Grand Marshall for the 2025 Cheyenne Frontier Days.

I took a little video of the end of the presentation as I was too enthralled at first to think to film it, but here is what I have:

I wish I had captured the whole thing.

Well that continues this series of posts. If you are just joining us, here are the other posts about our travels in Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Carhenge 

A Wander About Downtown Rapid City, SD 

Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks 

Mt. Rushmore National Park, Believe the Hype 

Crazy Horse Memorial 

Deadwood, South Dakota 

Wall Drug