Start from 36 curated places around Laramie, WY, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Sweet Melissa Cafe
Wyoming's fully vegetarian restaurant, doing scratch comfort food since the late '90s in a downtown room that wins over plenty of meat-eaters. The cauliflower wings and the seitan dishes are the orders people come back for.
2nd Street Deli
The local institution formerly known as Jeffrey's Bistro, rebranded by the same long-time owners into a deli format with a broader menu spanning American, Thai, and Indian dishes alongside the scratch sandwiches that built the original reputation. Same local sourcing, same vegetarian-friendly ethos, same downtown room.
Trails & outdoors
Turtle Rock Loop Trail
The signature Vedauwoo hike: a roughly three-mile loop winding through the area's famous wind-sculpted granite, aspen groves, and beaver ponds. Mostly easy with a few rocky stretches, and moose are a real possibility.
Medicine Bow Peak Trail
The big one in the Snowy Range: a roughly four-mile climb to the 12,013-foot summit, the high point of southern Wyoming, with alpine lakes and ridgeline drop-offs the whole way. A serious half-day above treeline.
Things to do
University of Wyoming Art Museum
The state's flagship art museum on the UW campus, with rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection spanning 15th-century works to contemporary art in a striking modern building. Free admission makes it an easy cultural stop.
Gryphon Theatre
A restored 1920s theater inside the Laramie Plains Civic Center, the town's main stage for touring concerts, community theater, and film. The 850-seat room hosts everything from local productions to national acts.
Landmarks & sights
Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site
The 1872 federal prison that once held Butch Cassidy, restored with furnished cell blocks, a working broom factory, and a reconstructed frontier town on the grounds. The self-guided audio tour walks you through the warden's house, women's quarters, and the dining hall.
University of Wyoming Geological Museum
Free campus museum anchored by a 75-foot Apatosaurus and 'Big Al,' the cast of the most complete Allosaurus ever found. There's a windowed fossil-prep lab where you can watch technicians work and a fluorescent-mineral room kids gravitate to.