Cody, WY

We have had a wonderful three days in Cody, WY. This town is near the east entrance to Yellowstone Park. It is a lovely town that seems to have great community spirit, and we have met very nice people.

The first afternoon we drove downtown, parked and walked to the visitor center. I thought I got a photo of it, but apparently I didn't. The exterior looks a lot like the CCC visitor center at Devils Tower, pictured in a previous blog post, and it turns out that this one in Cody was built in the same era and was the Buffalo Bill Museum before the FABULOUS new museum was built. Here is a photo taken from a web site.

 

We walked around downtown and had dinner at the Irma Hotel which was built in 1902 by William Cody (Buffalo Bill) and named after one of his daughters. I took this photo off a web site.

We had a hamburger and beer seated under the covered porch that you can see in the photo. Great spot for people watching.

The next day we toured the Buffalo Bill Museum. It is a museum of five parts and a central area known at The Hub. We got through the Draper Natural History Museum and the Buffalo Bill Museum. There is also a Plains Indian Museum, a Wester Art Museum and the Cody Firearms Museum. The two we toured are wonderful - new with great exhibits. Buffalo Bill Cody was a wildly successful showman in his later life, after being an early frontier guide and buffalo hunter (only for food - he hated the wonton slaughter of the buffalo for only their hides, which resulted in their near extinction). His road show toured many many towns and cities in the US, and toured Europe, Russia, and I'm not sure where else. It was very successful, but William Cody was not a good businessman and he died in poverty. He founded the town of Cody, and wanted to live and die here, but he died in Denver at the home of his sister, and he is buried on Lookout Mountain just west of Denver in the foothills, which was maybe not what he wanted, but it apparently was expedient for his family.

These are photos of the exterior of the museum:

 

They had a great 20 minute talk in front of a chuck wagon. The docent explained about how the chuck wagon was used at round-ups of cattle and cattle drives. The cook was king of his domain and his word was law. Food cooked was sometimes meat, beans, rice, and the favorite of all, sour dough biscuits which were baked in a dutch oven over the embers of a fire. They were adored by the cowboys. We learned that the name "chuck wagon" was started by someone named Charles. His nickname was Chuck, and his kitchen wagon was Chuck's Wagon, and later just chuck wagon. Who knew?!

Last night we went to the Cody Cattle Company dinner, show, and the Cody Night Rodeo. Great dinner in the music hall and a great foursome playing fiddle, guitar, bass, and sometimes mandolin and another guitar, performing country western music. This is largely a family affair - mom, dad, 3 sons, and 6 year old daughter (one song), and the dad's best friend, the real emcee and star of the show. Then after that was over, we went to the rodeo. I snapped this photo during the national anthem.

The impressive thing about this rodeo is that it runs EVERY night for three months - that is 90 shows!

Today we hiked Heart Mountain. It is a steep 7 mile round trip climb. We did 6 miles. This mountain is just north (I think) of Cody and one can see it from a distance. From certain angles it looks a little like Devils Tower, but trees do grow all the way to the top. The mountain is surrounded by plains, so it is quite prominent.

It was an absolutely beautiful hike.

Tired tonight!

 

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Gillette, WY

We had a mostly pleasant 2 1/2 days in Gillette, WY. We were camped at Cam-Plex, the Campbell County Fairgrounds which have very good convention facilities. This was the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA). This association was formed in 1963 by some dedicated pioneers in this style of travel, to enable motor home owners to have a social network. This evolved into many other benefits, programs and services, and these now annual conventions. We have been members since 1994 and have been to a total of 5 international conventions: Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Perry, GA, Minot, ND, and now Gillette, WY. There were said to be 2500 motor homes that came to this one. So about 5000 people for three days of exhibits, seeing the new motor homes on display, seminars of various types, social times, and two grandstand shows. Before the recession, there would be more like 3500-4000 motor homes that would come. Several very large RV manufacturers bit the dust during this time, and some were bought and incorporated into other companies. So the number of manufacturers that are now in business has declined. But the enthusiasm of the motor home owners in attendance at this event does not seem to have declined.

The first day - Thursday - was really great - warm and sunny with light breezes. We did most of the activities listed above. We toured the new RVs - saw some really nice new, innovative floor plans. There is a trend to downsizing and some interesting new options are available. We attended several seminars, and walked through the vendor exhibits.

We did buy one thing - a new portable satellite dish that is in this very cute little case. You connect it to your receiver with a coaxial cable (the connection is outside the RV - very easy), run through the dish set-up process, and voila! TV magically appears. I kind of smile about this because we had a portable dish when we first got DirecTV in 1994. The set-up was more difficult then, but same principle. We currently have a dome satellite dish on top of the RV, but we bought this new dish for several reasons. The most important one: It is often very handy to have a satellite dish you can move to a place with an unobstructed view of the sky - any tree will play havoc with the signal, and campgrounds have lots of trees! We like to have TV available, especially during baseball season and for news. So, that's what we bought.

Friday morning we had a storm move through with a tremendous downpour. We were camped in a field (not enough paved or gravel RV spaces at the fairgrounds - there never are enough spaces), so many of us were camped in several fields. When we arrived it was dry and nice. By the end of Friday morning, it was muddy, although we were on fairly high ground and so it wasn't bad. The rain stopped and the rest of the day was OK, although it rained again in the evening.

It is now Saturday evening. This morning it rained again, then it stopped. More mud, and as coaches were departing they were leaving pretty deep muddy ruts. We did two seminars in the morning, then looked at the weather radar, thought about what that field would soon look like, and decided to leave. We successfully drove out of the field, and drove to a nearby Walmart where we hooked our car up to the RV. JUST as we finished, the predicted storm moved in - very dark skies and the rain, wind and hail pelted the area. We were very fortunate - the hail was pea-sized, and we were well-positioned in the parking lot to ride it out. Don't know how much rain fell, but lots! The straight-line wind was at least 50 miles per hour.

The bottom line was, we think we made a really good decision to leave the convention when we did, and to stay off the highway until the storm passed; We did miss the finale - a grandstand musical show....which had to be moved indoors. We are in Buffalo, WY, tonight, and it is full of motor homes that were at the convention. We heard that at least one RV had to be towed out of the mud. I'll bet it was more than that!

We have heard and read about the damaging storms that passed through Minneapolis yesterday, and we think that there are going to be more, maybe, in fact, the same one that passed through Gillette earlier today. So we hope it will not be as bad as the previous one, and wish everyone well in Minneapolis!

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Devils Tower - Day 2

We had lovely weather for our full day at Devils Tower, Wyoming. It is raining and blowing right now (8:45pm MDT), but we had pleasant temps and blue skies most of the day.

We hiked both of the trails that go around the base of the Tower, and then a piece of a third trail. All very pretty. Total hike of about 5 miles. I took many many photos and it is hard to choose which to show, but here are my choices.

View, from the base trail, of the rock rubble that has sloughed off the tower. The tower is an igneous intrusion (as opposed to a volcanic core - i.e., it never was a volcano, only magma that failed to reach the earth's surface). As erosion occurred over the eons, the softer materials washed away, and left the hard core revealed.

A wonderful balanced rock encountered on the longer trail around the base.

Beautiful view of the red sedimentary rock formation. The Belle Fourche River flows right beside the rocks.

On one of the trails through a beautiful meadow.

The best view of the tower was from a little distance on another trail with a beautiful meadow in the foreground.

Not sure what this flower is but there were many.

A sculpture by the Japanese artist Junkyu Muto, of Italian marble with a base of igneous rock from the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota. Its title is The Circle of Sacred Smoke, reminding people that 20 tribes of Indians consider the tower to be a sacred place. This is one of the most beautiful contemporary sculptures I have seen. It was created to frame the tower in just this way. This is over near the prairie dogs, and we missed it yesterday.

The nice CCC-built Visitor Center.

Inside the visitor center. The picture depicts the Indian legend of the bear on the tower who chased a family up to the top of the tower, and they became the moon and the stars (something like that).

 

 

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Devils Tower, WY

We had another lovely drive today through the rest of South Dakota. Everywhere one looks, you see nothing but green grasses over the rolling hills. The Black Hills are also very green and there is lots of water!

We stopped at the overlook on I-90 near Chamberlin to see the Missouri River which looks normal this year. Severe flooding happened several years ago - we saw that in Pierre and couldn't believe the amount of water being discharged at Oahe Dam from the reservoir, which was just one of many dams where this was also necessary. The releases caused flooding along much of the Missouri.

We saw this great little motorcycle trailer in the parking lot at the overlook. If you look closely, you will see Woody of Toy Story driving the covered wagon.

Also along the interstate, for at least 150 miles, there were about 7 billboards strung out advertising a Firehouse Brewing Company in Rapid City. Beside each billboard was parked a vintage firetruck. South Dakotans really know how to advertise along an interstate! Many travelers will no doubt have seen the "World Famous Wall Drug" signs plastered along the way, and there were at least a dozen other tourist attractions being advertised with much signage. It seems like more each time we drive I-90.

 

We continued on to Devils Tower, Wyoming, where we are in a lovely campground tonight. We have a view of Devils Tower from our campsite.

This afternoon we walked along the Belle Fourche River.

 

And oh, yes, there is a very large prairie dog community along the river!

The movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" shows nightly here. We didn't go but thought about going. Saw it years ago when it first came out.

Tomorrow we will do a hike at the Tower.

If I actually get this posted it will be a miracle. There is very weak cell service here, and the campground WiFi is poor, but it is surely beautiful!

 

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Traveling Again - First Night - Mitchell, SD

We had a very pleasant first day out - no rain! It has rained and rained in the Upper Midwest, and there were a few stormy areas south of us, but we lucked out. All the rivers look bank full but not flooded. The crops in general look great - most farmers got their crops planted and are going to do well this year, but there are a few areas that are too soggy for planting.

We are heading west and are in Mitchell, SD tonight. We had driven through here several years ago but didn't do any sightseeing. We decided to go out to dinner and afterward we easily found the Corn Palace, for which Mitchell is widely known. This edifice was first built in 1892 to showcase the corn grown in the area. In 1905 it was rebuilt - bigger, I think, and was an attempt to get the capital changed from Pierre to Mitchell - it didn't work. In 1921 it was rebuilt again, and this is essentially the structure that exists today.

We saw a display of early photos, and the original 1921 building had no minarets - those apparently were added in 1937. The building is built of wood, but annually the exterior is decorated with corn - all parts of a corn plant - in outstanding designs that give the Palace a distinctive appearance. The corn murals are works of art. The inside of the building is also decorated and houses a large multi use center - a basketball court, a stage, and the area can be used for conventions, meetings, etc. When not in use for these purposes, it contains a very large gift shop with all kinds of kitschy stuff. Gary got a really nice sweatshirt. He can claim roots in South Dakota - both his parents are from this state.

We enjoyed our evening in Mitchell which is also home to Dakota Wesleyan University that has a lovely small campus.

Here are several photos I snapped as we walked around.

This is a photo of a photo of the 1964 Palace which shows how different the designs can look each year.

 

 

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