Fort Collins

Jenny, Paul and Max saying goodbye - we all cried when we left

We left Alpine at about 10am after breakfast at the local diner. Went down through Pinedale to Rock Springs, and on to I-80 to Rawlins. Just past Rawlins was the town of Sinclair- which we've noticed from I-80 in the past as a location for a big oil refinery, but what else? we wondered. So we checked it out.

Sinclair Oil Refinery in Sinclair, WY (It's about fifty times larger than what you see here, if not 100 times larger; it's HUGE). We were told they are now bringing in chicken fat by the tankcar-load and creating biodiesel fuel here.

The Historic Parco Inn Building in Sinclair, WY. This town was created as a company town by Frank Kistler for the Producers and Refiners Oil Company (PARCO). It was designed as a Spanish Colonial village and completed in 1925. All the "downtown" buildings were in this style. This Inn was a destination for many celebs, including, I was told, Amelia Earhart, Clark Gable and President William Henry Harrison,  But the town hit hard times in the depression of the 1930s, and eventually was sold to Sinclair Oil, and the name was changed. Today, this building is owned by an Independent Baptist Church. It was sold to the church for $1, with the promise they would "keep it up." We were looking in the windows when the youth minister of the  church came along and offered to "give us a tour."

The Inn in earlier times - under the name Sinclair Hotel

The lobby of the old Inn

The church uses as a sanctuary what was the dining room. There was a pool in this dining room in which trout lived. A patron could select a trout and have it cooked up - the freshest fish in Wyoming

After Sinclair, we drove toward Laramie and then came down into Colorado along a beautiful route that took us up over a 10,200 foot pass and then down the canyon of the Poudre River into Fort Collins. It was an amazing ride. 

Tomorrow we meet Rob in Boulder at 10:30am.