The town of Cody is named for it’s most famous founder and benefactor, William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody, flamboyant frontiersman, showman, and entrepreneur of the West. Everything else around here is named for him as well: William Cody National Forest, Buffalo Bill Dam, Buffalo Bill Boy Scout Camp, Etc.
We set out this morning to visit the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The boys were a little wary of another museum, but this was no ordinary museum.
Actually, there are five museums under one roof here, each quite extensive. On our “taste of America” tour, we gave it two hours. We could easily have spent the whole day, and not been bored. They have a Plains Indian Museum, a Museum of Western Art, a Firearms Museum, a Natural History Museum, and of course a Buffalo Bill Museum. We made it to five, missing the Plains Indian Museum in favor of Yellowstone.
In the Museum entrance, we saw this really cool MG, which they were raffling off. We thought of our friend Larry, who has an old MG. This car is really beautiful, belying the amount of labor and parts needed to keep it running!
They had several sculptures or casts of sculptures throughout the museum. This sculpture cast of Teddy Roosevelt was taken apart to demonstrate how sculptures are put together. The actual sculpture was donated to the City of Portland. We wondered where it was in Portland.
The boys and Forrest took the sculpture challenge and successfully assembled a cowboy on a horse (after a false start in which the whole thing fell apart).
We started in the Western Art museum, which featured around 500 works, including several Remington paintings and sculptures. They had a computer module to make your own painting, using pre-drawn elements that grew or shrank depending on where you put them (perspective drawing). Both boys made a creation and sent it via email to themselves. This is Ian's. He focused on a battle between cavalry and Indians. Several battle scenes of Little Bighorn and other cavalry-indian battles were featured in the exhibit.
This is Jeremy's. He liked the buffalo, and decided to show them chasing the Indians, reversing history and giving the buffalo and chance to recover. He should have had them chasing Buffalo Bill!
The firearms museum features over 2700 firearms, the largest single collection of historic firearms in the world. We were amused to see a pistol donated by Dick Cheney—would have liked to have seen a shotgun.
Buffalo Bill contributed greatly to the popularization of the West with his adventures. Born in a log cabin in LeClaire, Iowa, he was raised in Kansas. He worked as a bullwhacker, mounted messenger, guide, cavalryman, rancher, author, scout, buffalo hunter, entertainer, national guardsman, speechmaker, newspaperman, miner, hotelier, Santa Claus, Circus performer, and motion-picture producer. Many of these were not jobs he took, but enterprises he started. He was a true entrepreneur.
The Wild West Show featured performers such as Wild Bill Hickock, Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, as well as Cossacks. They performed in large cities in the East and in Europe for royalty. Many shows were sold out, yet this show eventually went bankrupt. The dime store novels contributed greatly to both promoting the West and propagating in untrue, glamorous image of western life. Buffalo Bill always had great sympathy for the Native American Indians, claiming that every Indian uprising was brought on by a treaty that was broken by the U.S. He was actually called upon to negotiate with Sitting Bull prior to the massacre at Wounded Knee, but the negotiations failed, and Sitting Bull fled to Canada after the battle.
The museum had a lot of interactive exhibits for kids and adults, more than the Smithsonians had. It also had a great photography section, that made us think of Grandma Parker. The first photo in that section was a beautiful waterfall scene from Oregon. It didn’t tell us where in Oregon.
On the way out of the parking lot we took a picture of our new bug collection. We have bugs from about 15 states plastered on the front of our van (Forrest got the car washed in Virginia—sorry, Audrey). South Dakota was the worst bug state, as displayed on our windshield.
Headed out of Cody, we saw the original settlement on the cliffs above the Shoshone River. Cody and some business partners established the Shoshone Irrigation Company in 1894, and surveyed the settlement in 1895. Cody’s vision was build a resort community around the hot springs in the area.
The hotel in Cody had a stuffed buffalo in every room. Jeremy was quite taken with it, so we got him one as a souvenir.
We stopped for lunch on the shores of Yellowstone Lake. With a maximum depth of 410 feet, and over 160 square miles of surface area, this lake lies at the bottom of caldera. Yellowstone Caldera is the largest active volcano in the world, and considered one of the natural wonders (our third on this tour). It was quite windy on the shore, and 63 degrees felt chilly in shorts. We picked up some interesting driftwood.
We spotted these buffalo grazing close to Indian Pond, a hydrothermal explosion crater (looked like a small pond). We expected to see a lot of buffalo, but didn’t until we spotted a large herd late in the day, on the way out of the park. We also did not see a bear at all.
Forrest picked up what he thought was a fishing lure along a trail. When he showed it to the boys, Ian correctly identified it as a gummy worm (candy) and popped it in his mouth. After Forrest told him where it came from, Ian quickly ejected it from his mouth!
At the Fishing Bridge visitor’s center, Forrest liked this moose skull. On the beam to the left, a squirrel can be seen peeking out. He was actually the main attraction for all the kids in the room.
This is a picture of Grizzly Peak across the lake from Bridge Bay. The surface of the lake is at 7733 feet. We drove the southern loop of the park, headed from east to west. This route followed the entire western boundary of the lake.
At West Thumb Geyser Basin, Sherry liked this hot spring. These springs contain millions of microorganisms, which have developed their own ecosystem in the boiling water environment, and make the colors vibrant and fun to look at.
We didn’t see any deer all day, but saw quite a few elk, in three different herds. This bull was by himself, across the road from several cows. He was a little restless having his picture taken, and eventually left.
At the Grant Village visitor center, we learned that Lodgepole Pines, which make up 64% of the 2 million acres in Yellowstone (80% of the forest), are a very adaptive and opportunistic species. They make different cones, depending on the conditions they are growing in. In a high-fire region, they make a serotinous cone, which is covered with a waxy substance that prevents the cone from seeding, and sometimes stays on the tree for 20 years. When a fire sweeps over, it will melt the wax, leaving the cone free to re-seed the area without competition, since the fire destroyed other plants. In a low-fire region, the trees drop non-serotinous cones annually, just as other conifers do.
We caught this momma and calf elk laying beside the road, in a herd of about 8 cow elk.
The Continental Divide winds through Yellowstone, and we actually crossed it twice, with a third crossing anticipated for the trip tomorrow.
This is Kepler Cascades, a beautiful series of waterfalls along the Firehole river.
Blue Star Spring is an incredibly pure hot spring that looks inviting. Too bad it’s around 200 degrees!
We finally reached Old Faithful. The rangers missed the predicted eruption time by 11 minutes. It was windy, but worth the wait.
After Old Faithful, we went in search of food. The Old Faithful Lodge still looks as Forrest remembered it, only they have restricted access to the upper crow’s nest—too unstable for the crowds.
Forrest caught the resident pianist playing in a corner. He was doing a good job, and we could hear the piano reverberating everywhere in the lodge, even with all the people. We did not stay in the many accommodations at the Old Faithful site, because everything was full.
Eventually, we decided not to eat in the lodge, because it was very expensive. We found a “cafeteria” across the fountain from the lodge, and it had very good food for less than half the price. Plus, we were able to catch a second eruption of Old Faithful with the sun passing down behind clouds in the background. Forrest took 46 pictures, and this is the best one.
From the restaurant, we headed out of the park, with much to look at on the way out. We stopped at an overlook, and took a picture of this lupine with the sun-tinted clouds and deadwood in the background.
This is the Upper Geyser Basin. There are over 10,000 geothermal formations in Yellowstone. With the wind fairly light here, these hot spots created an other-worldly effect.
We spotted this road-crew buffalo, who had apparently decided to water down the sidewalk. He sedately walked around behind our van and kept plodding down the middle of the rest stop, unconcerned about cars. We decided he was pretty full of himself, knowing that he was the star of the show.
The Midway Geyser Basin contains several more hot springs, and they come together in several of these hot cascades into the Firehole River.
This series of mud rings was along Firehole Lake Drive.
Just after sunset we went by the Pink Cone Geyser on Firehole Lake Drive, and it was erupting!
Altogether, we enjoyed our 6-hour tour of Yellowstone. Jeremy pronounced it a favorite of his for the trip, and we all feel that a return trip for more than half a day would be fun. However, this is the “Taste of America” tour, and we got a great “taste” of Yellowstone today. We headed to our hotel in West Yellowstone, arriving shortly after 10:00 p.m. Jeremy and Ian’s eyes lit up when they spotted another slide in the swimming pool. One wonders why we drug them all over the country, when we could have just gone to Splash every day. It would have been a lot cheaper! By the time we got settled, Forrest realized blogging would have to wait until the morning.
