Our first tourist site was a large coffee pot water tower located at the Sapp Brothers fuel stop, just East of Cheyenne on I-80.
Next stop on I-80 was “Mel Gould’s Buryville”. Mel Gould was born in 1930 and has lived at Buryville (or just on top of it) since 1955. A self-taught inventor, Mel has filled his property with odd assortment of metal sculptures and strange vehicles, many of which were featured in the pages of magazines such as Mechanix Illustrated in the 1960s. “Mr. Cranky,” for example, turns a large carousel that can be seen from nearby Interstate 80, while “Wind Thing,” another wind-powered sculpture, generates the electricity for the lights of Buryville.
Buryville is Mel’s underground workshop, made of a school bus, camper, grain silo, and 55,000-gallon gas tank that Mel had buried on the property. It’s down here that Mel does most of his work, and although he describes himself modestly as a “tinkerer” and “pack rat,” he has had a long career as engineer and has worked with environmental artist Christo on three of his Land Art pieces.
Our third stop on I-80 to Nebraska was too a private home that has been designed to appear like a giant teepee with attached smaller teepees. But with some modern amenities, such as a second story deck. Actually, it’s pretty cool.
Pièce de Résistance of our trip was to the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace, on I-80 at the Wyoming/Nebraska border. However, in order to get to the Shrine, one has to travel into Nebraska to Exit 1, return into Wyoming on US-30. But because of construction exits 1 & 8 where closed eastbound; in other words, we had to travel an additional 56 miles round trip into Nebraska in order to get to it. It was still worth it.
Heading back into Wyoming & home. So until tomorrow.
LoVe Us!!!
Hi