Cody to Sheridan, Wyoming

 
 
 
The drive from Cody was educational! We passed huge trucks of large lumpy things, which we eventually identified as sugar beets! Then we passed an airport of "mothballed" old planes, including this Royal Canadian Airforce. Then we started in the Shell Canyon. Wow.

Cody - Museum

 
 
Cody, Wyoming has the Buffalo Bill Cody, wild west museum that we spent about 2.5 hours in. It had a whole wing describing the exploits of Buffalo Bill and his entourage - from his days as a guide for the U.S. Calvalry to his staged Wild West shows. It was really quite interesting. There were also displays about the plains Indians - their early life styles and their current history. We agreed to leave at 12:30 but could have stayed longer!

We headed on towards Custer, but only got as far as Sheridan.

Cody, gunfight

 
 
 
Turns out that Cody, Wyoming, is named for Buffalo Bill Cody, who was an original spin doctor. And he arrived in Cody, with Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane and a bunch of bad guys for a gun fight right in front of the Irma Hotel. It was all staged, of course, and a lot of fun with lots of blanks being shot, a little story and a lot of hamming it up. The good guys won!

Cody, Wyoming

 
 
 
As we approached Cody, we found the landscape to be very dramatic, a preview of the badlands in S. Dakota I think.

While we were waiting for the truck to be fixed we were forced to meander through all the shops along the main drag. Laurie found a friend he could lean on.

YNP to Cody, Wyoming

 
 
 
We left our campsite in the morning cold - about 5 degrees C. with neither of us having slept well because our furnace had run out of propane sometime in the early hours and inside the camper was very cool! I also night-mared about the drive down the mountain without good brakes.

As it turned out, the brakes were noisy but effective and we traveled though some interesting landscapes to get to Cody, Wyoming. We found a NAPA (car parts) and they directed us to a garage that would be able to do the brakes. The mechanic very kindly agreed to work late on the brakes because he was totally booked for the Friday.

So the brakes are fixed, yahoo!

YNP11

Can you find the elk?

YNP 10

We hiked down to this waterfall, and then decided that we had seen, smelled, hiked and gazed in wonderment enough! The beer was cold and good.

The bad news was that throughout the day our brakes had become increasingly noisy, by the end of the day, sounding like metal on metal and we knew we had a problem. We were also at about 8500 feet elevation with two crossings of the continental divide ahead of us - all down hill to Cody where we thought we could get them fixed.


So the decision was made, we couldn't spend the day back at Mammoth springs to get pix of the Elk (sorry Sara), we would have to head to Cody to try and get the brakes done before the weekend.

Barb wandered down to the river from the campsite, and there was another buffalo, enjoying the beautiful spot too.

When she returned to the campsite, there were two female elk, just behind the first row of trees - about 50 feet away. The camera couldn't pick them up, but we did see them!