When we lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, from my 7th-12th years, I think our family must have had a thing about rocks. Of course, it was pretty barren high prairie, but the rocks had a particular fascination.
Our LDS congregation, Cheyenne Second Ward, had a tradition each August of going to Veedauwoo Recreation Area in the Medicine Bow Forest for a ward picnic, Pioneer Day, I think. We pronounced Vee-da-voo, by the way, and it means "Land of the Earthborn Spirits." . It was a daylong affair and was only about an hour away, so we had lots of time to play and explore. The hills seemed to be mostly cracked granite and were fun to climb, with lots of handholds and little shadowy spaces under the stones, perfect hiding places for snakes, although we never saw any or even thought about the possibility of them. What trees there were on the hills were scrubby pines, windblown and beautifully shaped.
There were also little meadows, full of cattails, tall reeds, and gurgling little streams that flowed through and under the mossy green spaces. You could hide from people in the peaceful corners and the water covered the sounds of the picnic area not that far away. But the best part was that the mossy stretches often had enough water flowing under them to form floating mats that you could walk on, if you were light enough and fast enough. When I was younger I could pretty much walk anywhere, but in the end I could hardly walk on any of it, I weighed too much. But it was still fun to be there and share the fun with my younger siblings.
I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world.
Sometimes,
if there was time, we would drop by the Tree in the Rock rest area in the
middle of Highway 80. It was
halfway between Cheyenne and Laramie and not far from the Lincoln Memorial, a bronze bust on top of a box of granite pillars. It
was also a good place for climbing, although not much was there besides rocks
and a scraggly pine tree in the middle of a stone. Later, when I visited the location, they had
put up a bigger fence and wrapped a cable around the rock, which was cracked.
The best nearby place to visit for climbing was Natural Fort (we called it Indian Fort because of the legend). When you headed southwest out of Cheyenne towards Ft. Collins, Colorado, at the state line were two limestone outcroppings. The legend was that two Indian war parties met at this outcropping and the one group massacred the other group as they tried to hide out. It was an interesting story, but the cave-pocked outcropping with the mysterious set of steps carved into the side that allowed you to climb up to the ‘observation platform,’ a flat section of the hill, was much more exciting to us kids. It was not far from our house and if we could con Mom and Dad into taking time to take us there, it was well worth the trip. I have been back to the area, but the outcropping has been bypassed by Interstate 25 so you either have take a long a frontage road to the one or off-road it to the other.
This older picture I found online is more what I remember. In current pictures it is covered with graffiti. 
Of course, we also visited Devil's Tower one summer are part of a larger vacation that seemed to involve high winds wherever we went, even at Mt. Rushmore. More and more rocks!
Vedauwoo Photo: Clark Harris https://www.territorysupply.com/camping-medicine-bow-routt-thunder-basin
Tree photo: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/317926054914339971/
Natural Fort Photo: https://mountainscholar.org/handle/10217/38780?show=full
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