Day 70: Rawlins, Wyoming

We only drove 211.5 miles today to Rawlins, Wyoming. Since we spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot, neither of us got much sleep. Again, I wish I had paid more attention in Geology class...what is the continental divide??? I looked it up on line...still not sure..."The Great Divide, also called the Continental Divide, separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean from those of the Atlantic or Arctic Oceans. It runs from the Seward Peninsula in Alaska, through western Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. From there, it follows the crest of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental and extends to the tip of South America. It is crossed by the Panama Canal." (Wikipedia) Anyway we crossed over it...

We met up with our friend Terry at this campground.We had a very nice visit. He took us to dinner in Rawlins. Here are some pictures of down town area. Cute little town, but he said they had snow through mid-June!

Then we went to visit the only real tourist attraction in Rawlins: Wyoming's Frontier Prison, or "The Old Pen."

The movie "Prison" was filmed here.
Since there were so many outlaws in post-Civil War Wyoming, the state legislators planned this state of the art penitentiary to send a message to these desperadoes that Wyoming is no longer a place for the lawless. It was served as a penitentiary from 1901 to 1981.
This red roofed building is the death row portion of the prison. Legend has it that the inmates were digging a tunnel under the stone wall and would hide the dirt up in the ceiling. This is the reason the ceiling inside sags.
9 prisoners were hung and 5 prisoners were executed by lethal gas in the gas chamber.
Another interesting story is about a little old lady who lived across the street from the prison. She use to bake things every day for the prisoners and they all got to know her. One man was left out on parole, he broke into her house and attacks her. After his arrest the cops thought he would be safer away from the townspeople who loved the little old lady so they put him back into the Old Pen. They did not anticipate the prisoners code of justice. The killed him.