The Schells' Travels 2011: Arrived in Cody, WY

After saying good-bye to some new friends we had met in Rapid City, and a small delay with the air brakes sticking on the rig, we left Rapid City as planned on Tuesday. It was an easy drive heading west on I-90 into WY turning off near Sheridan, WY onto State Route 14 (per GPS, the trucker's route). First let me say that Dick did an AWESOME job of driving this very windy/switchback road (most of the time the speed limit was 20mph) but it was a trecherous drive to say the least and yet they say not as bad as 14A. Even Murphy would get up in the window once in a while to see what the heck was going on! The scenery was beautiful (I'll attach some pictures) as we climbed into the Bighorn National Forest to about 8500 ft. and then a sign for 18 miles of the same going down. There wasn't a lot of traffic either way so we just took our time and had no problems but it was good to reach the bottom of that mountain and on into Cody. We spent the first night at WalMart where they let you stay for 3 nights with no problem and we were one of about 20 rigs in there that night. The next morning we checked out a nearby campground and that is where we are for the next 10 days. It is a nice campground with lots of things to do here in Cody (more than we realized) so we'll use this as a home base to go to Yellowstone next week.

Cody is definitely a cowboy town with a lot of history here. We first visited the Buffalo Bill Dam just 6 miles outside of Cody which was, in 1910 when it was completed, the highest dam in the world and most of the construction was done during a Wyoming winter.

Cody offers a trolley tour of the town which we found very informative and interesting. Their motto is 'give us an hour, we'll give you 100 years'. We did this tour on our first day so it helped us familiarize ourselves with the surroundings. If I remember correctly, we saw about 5-6 deer in people's yards as the trolley took us around town.

So far the most interesting and fun thing we've done here in Cody is the Red Canyon Wild Mustang Tour. I had been reading up on this tour and saw the rave reviews so even though we're not horse enthusiasts we decided to see what it was all about. Wow.....what an experience! Ken, our guide and owner of the company, has been giving these tours for 10 years and has even had a PBS series done about the mustangs here in McCullough Peaks outside Cody. There were 12 of us on the tour so we rode an old yellow school bus about 20 minutes outside Cody where we turned off onto BLM land. The roads were dusty, dirty, bumpy and windy before he spotted some of the mustangs. I'd say we went at least 5 miles back into the desert where he had to stop the bus and we walked at least a mile in order to get close to them. He couldn't go off the road (and we had been told to wear hiking shoes just in case we did have to walk) so we headed out towards them. His permit allows him to get within 500 ft. of them but Dick and I think we were no more than 100 yards from some of them so we got to see them up close and personal even without the binoculars he issues everyone. There were about 20 beautiful mustangs, including 4 baby calfs, ahead of us where we just stood and admired as he explained how they are in 'bands' of 4, how they determine who's in which band, who is the dominant one etc. There are only about 150 mustangs left on this 110,000 acres of BLM land and Ken is very passionate about how the government has rounded up these wild horses, they try to sell them and when they can't, they then are fostered out. He encouraged us to write to our congressman to save the mustangs because 10 years ago there were over 500 on this land and now there are substantially less to share these wide open spaces. We did see many more of this 150 in the distance but they were headed for water and a fence separated us from getting closer to them. The bands move around so where they were on our trip is probably not where they were the next day. Ken said not very often do you have to walk so far to see them BUT if he can get closer with the bus, then you can't get out of the bus so we felt like even though we had to walk, it was worth it.

Friday evening we had a very good Mexican dinner at a local New Mexico style restaurant called Zapata's before we went to a cowboy music revue which is a Branson style music variety show that we enjoyed. Dan Miller is a local guy who you can tell thoroughly enjoys what he does and has a 13 year old daughter who is already a very good fiddle player so she'll only get better with age. Our dinner had some 'kick' to the food that Dick enjoyed very much........however, it was a bit spicy for me (we'll go back though before we leave). Our waiter told us that the owner (a lady) is there early every morning making everything fresh every day.

We also noticed that WY has a very nice Veterans Memorial Park so we drove out there Saturday morning and they have done a great job honoring all of their veterans from all wars. They call it Freedom Plaza and we had a nice chat with a gentleman who has volunteered his time for 4 years doing the maintenance work to keep it looking as nice as it does. We'll do some research to see if each state has a memorial of this type.......if they don't, they should.

Next week we'll continue hanging out here taking in the Buffalo Bill Museum (they say it takes 2 days now) and Yellowstone and several other things we've found to visit here.

From where we are here in the west, it's hard to imagine what our families and friends are experiencing in the east (our niece and family from VA were in Nassau when Irene passed through there but they are safe and trying to get back to the states) where they'll see what Irene did (if anything) to their area in VA. Stay safe everyone!