Cody, WY: Sep. 29 – Oct. 1
We loved our short visit to Cody, WY. There is so much to see in and around this Western town, named after its founder, “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
We stayed at the Ponderosa RV Park. It is a small family owned campground right on the edge of town, and within walking distance to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which houses five separate museums, including the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, the Draper Natural History Museum, the Plains Indian Museum and the Whitney Western Art Museum.
If you are ever in Cody, the Center is a ‘must-see’. Charlie and I are not big gun people, but we spent hours perusing the Cody Firearms Museum. It is fascinating. The museum houses the most comprehensive collection of American firearms in the world. They have over 7,000 guns in their collection.
The Buffalo Bill Museum is full of interesting historical information about Buffalo Bill’s life. It is said that in his heyday he was the most recognized and celebrated person in the world – the first truly international “superstar.”
The Whitney Western Art Museum has all different types of Western art work, while the Plains Indian Museum does a great job of telling a story from the Indian’s perspective with full scale mock-ups of Indian villages and day to day objects. We enjoyed our visit to all 5 museums. It took a full day to get through them, and we felt we went through them fairly quickly.
We spent one afternoon at The Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. It is just about an hour Northeast of Cody. This area is known for its diverse landscape and for the wild Mustangs that are allowed to roam freely. Bighorn is about an hour’s drive Northeast of Cody.
We were lucky enough to spot a few of the Mustangs hanging out in their environment.
On our way back to Cody, from Bighorn, we stopped by the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. Heart Mountain was a ‘relocation’ center, opened in August 1942. More than 14,000 Japanese and American Japanese were imprisoned at this site during its three-year existence. The new center, which opened in 2011, uses photographs, artifacts, oral histories and interactive exhibits to give people a feel for what it was like for those that were confined there during WWII. Charlie and I both found it very informative, and heart wrenching to see how these American citizens were treated. It was also scary to see how quickly and easily it was for neighbors to turn on neighbors simply because of somebody’s heritage and/or race.
We stopped for lunch at the WY Old Brewing Company in Powell. It looked like a relatively new brewery. The food was good, but it took forever to get our meal served. Hopefully they resolve that problem, as we liked the food and environment.
For dinner we ate at Proud Cut Saloon ‘n Steak House in Cody. The food and service was excellent. The restaurant was packed with locals. In speaking with our bartender we discovered that we timed our visit to Cody perfectly, as we were there for the last weekend of business for most of the restaurants and shops in town, before they all shut down for the winter.
After a great couple of days in Cody we packed up and moved on towards Spearfish, SD. In order to get there you have to cross a mountain range. Snow was in the forecast so we opted for the most Southern route over the range. This route, along WY-16, took us through the small towns of Ten sleep and Meadowlark Lake. It is a very scenic area, one that I would love to return to in the future.
If you ever drive along this route, be sure to keep an eye out for deer. We had near collisions with them at least half a dozen times. We had even more near misses when we got to South Dakota. It was pretty nerve racking.
Until our next blog, about Mt. Rushmore and Spearfish Canyon……..