My first real cross country.. or at least a try at it

So my wife and I really wanted to get out to Utah for a concert.  I thought what a great chance to actually fly somewhere.  It would only be about 450-500 miles each way.  We made our plans and headed to the airport early in the morning.  I got the weather brief and it sounded like as long as we got off the ground pretty quickly we were going to be ok.  We would be traveling up to Wyoming and going over along I-80 to avoid flying over the mountains.  We got off a little later than we wanted but the first leg of the trip up to Laramie WY was just smooth and really beautiful right after sunrise.  I had been told that the weather at Laramie, especially the winds could be an issue.  As it turns out the winds were calm and it was a decent landing.  We gassed up and got the weather for our next stop in Rawlins WY.  It sounded not too bad but we needed to get there and see how our next stop, Rock Springs was looking.  Rock Springs was just getting a little windy.  As we got about 20 mins out of Laramie we started hitting turbulence.  It steadily got worse and got beyond moderate turbs.  I decided that another 3 hours of that was not going to work for either myself or my wife.  We diverted back and landed at our home airport in Denver.  Even though we didn't make our destination or the show there, we had a great time just flying.  We ended up with a whopping 3.5.

Here is a shot at Laramie and the great FBO there, Cowboy Aviation.