<p>I've heard that it's cold in Laramie... wondering if anyone can give me a first-hand explanation about how it is living there and/or going to school there. Thanks!!</p>
<p>Hi there!</p>
<p>I lived in Laramie for a while, doing an exchange-like program at Univ. of Wyoming. Laramie is HIGH (6.400 ft.) and DRY (260+ sunny days/year). I arrive just before Thanksgiving and stayed there for the following Spring semester aslo.</p>
<p>Because it’s dry, I personally didn’t feel that cold, there’s far less snowing than in, say, New England or the Appalachian. However, temperatures never goes that much up even in the late fall, AFAIK. Sky is beautiful.</p>
<p>The campus is just by downtown (consider it’s a 30K inhabitants city, half of them university-related), only the stadium, the main park lot, an energy lab and the apartments are more than 10-min walking from the dorms, 2 of which have pretty cool tunnels linking them to the Whasakie Dining Hall. There’s a lot of construction going on, I know ther were building a new, modern and huge lab energery with Dick Chenney money (he is wyominian).</p>
<p>Some business there were organizing something like an Off-campus Meal Plan for those who, living not in the dorms, wanted to diversify food options, but most are far from university.</p>
<p>There are great outdoors there in Laramie, plenty of trails and mountain-bike tracks. I never took much advantage of them, cause I’m afraid of bears and had no large groups to wander into the woods, mountains and stream. But I’m just paranoid regarding animals, never heard of a bear attacking hikers or wandering into the city while I was there. There’s a small, albeit very cheap, ski resort in the area (Snowny Range). Not dozens of lifts, just a couple courses, but they open early and close late.</p>
<p>If you have a car, you can easily travel to Denver (2h) for an interesting weekend. Even more near is Steamboat Spring, the famous Colorado ski resort. Roads there are totally traffic-free, even the interstates, I never got a jam/slowed traffic except for construction. I used Laramie as a base to visit (on holidays, Spring Break) a bunch of Nat. Parks (Yellostone, Mt. Rushmore, Rock Mountains). There’s an airport in Laramie, taking off on 19-seat airplane in the middle of a snowstorm, with plenty of de-icing covering the windows in pink, was the freaking flying experience of my life.</p>
<p>Students I met were cool toward me (Italian, obvious foreign accent). Some of them found very interesting that an Italian ended up in the least populated US State instead of in a big city. University is not a party-one, definitively. Drinking laws are among the harsher in US.</p>
<p>Puting it all, I loved my time there at UWyo, would reccomend to anyone.</p>
<p>I went two years ago and visited Laramie. I personally didn’t like it (Wyoming as a whole) and hated the dryness and thought it was worse then Florida’s humidity (I’m from there). I thought someone was sitting on me. I also went to Colorado and South Dakota and passed through Montana. I didn’t like any of these places and I guess I’m more of a East Coast guy. I went and visited the historic jail and the girl there was very school spirited about the school. She thought it was the best school/area and I laughed (sorry just not me). There was no one there, but it was in July. I thought there were more things to do by Yellow Stone and if you ever go there, it is not that close and hardly any towns in between. Europe said much more things, but I just wanted to tell you what I thought. I would never live there or anywhere near, but that’s just me and I know people who love Denver and etc. </p>
<p>PS- Denver isn’t that far away and closer then Yellow Stone.</p>
<p>Graduated from there many, many years ago. I’m from New England, and I’d say there’s more snow in Wyoming. Definitely more of the sideways blowing kind. In contrast to New England winters, once the storm moves on the sky is very sunny. During the worst storms, all the roads out of town might close. You just learned to sit tight and make your own entertainment. I adjusted to the altitude (it’s 7,200 feet) but there are some people who never do. Back then, about a third of the students were from out of state, but even in-state students didn’t go home for weekends - it could be a 400 mile one way trip - so it was not at all a suitcase type of school. There was plenty of drinking and sports were a big draw. To generalize, people are courteous, helpful and fairly conservative. Yellowstone is about 400 miles away in the northwest corner of the state; Laramie is in the southeast corner, about an hour from Cheyenne, the state capitol. Never saw a bear in the Snowy Range. It’s best to visit to see for yourself.</p>
<p>Not quite Laramie, but I lived in Cheyenne for a year plus. The altitude is tough on most visitors, but in less than a week, the vast majority of people don’t have problems. It is VERY dry - DW has always had dry skin, so she almost had to bath in moisturizer. As much as we liked it there, we ultimately couldn’t live there permanently primarily for that reason.</p>
<p>There really isn’t that much snow compared to the midwest or northeast, but as a visitor said to us, “You get more ‘weather’ with your 2 inches here than we get with a foot out east.” The wind can be incredible coming off the front range (Cheyenne is the windiest “city” in the US), and as alluded to above, the snow just goes sideways and piles up in inconvenient places. Plus, the windchill can be horrendous - recall having to walk backwards more than once in order to be able to breath. Not so much straight cold, though (that’s relative - I’m a Wisconsin native).</p>
<p>It is isolated, and you’d have to go to Denver (or perhaps Fort Collins) to get any taste of city life. That said, it’s beautiful, and if you enjoy the outdoors (and have access to a car), you have a lot of great destinations (many not well known) to explore (we mostly just hiked). If that’s not your thing, this wouldn’t be your place.</p>