Friday, July 11, 2008
Day 10, Thermopolis to Cody, WY
Tuesday, the 10th day of our journey, started out just fine. We stopped at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. I wish I had brought the camera because it was a really amazing place. The fossils were bought by this guy who must have had TONS of money because they were fantastic.
And then, in 1993, a couple of geologists found fossils poking up through a dark layer of rock in a nearby ranch.
The rich guy bought the ranch and they started to exacavate and they keep pulling really amazing dinosaur bones out of the mountain. We got to visit the dinosaur dig and our guide was an older gentleman by the name of John who knew almost everything that there was to know about this particular site.
Then we got on the road.
We were headed for Cody, WY. On the way, we saw the Rocky Mountains rising to our left, and the land turned more arid, more rocky, more deserty. Cody is only 50 or miles from Yellowstone. We had decided against making that final trek there because we'd been warned about road construction and heavy crowds, but Cody, well, maybe Cody wouldn't be so bad.
I don't know why we thought that.
Cody was created as a tourist town to deal with the traffic heading to Yellowstone, to capitalize on the legend of William Cody (aka Buffalo Bill), to basically spread tourism dollars a little eastward from Yellowstone. It has a long Downtown area with little boutique shops designed to slurp money from your wallet at an alarming rate.
I'd seen a sign for Buffalo Bill State Park. State Parks, usually, are pretty nice and cheap places to camp. Cheap being the most important word there. $12.00 a night cheap, to be exact. The park itself is 15 miles on the other side of Cody, and built on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, which was created by the damming of a canyon river. The resulting lake was large and treeless, but it would be a good place to camp, right?
Wrong.
The first place we tried to set up our tent at was a flat and baked hard slab of adobe mud. We tried to push our tent stakes in and they wouldn't budge. We ended up finding rocks and using them, cavemen style, to pound the stakes down. It was then we noticed the wind. Not just a wind, but a gale, coming across the reservoir and bending the tent poles like we were in a hurricane. J was frustrated and I wasn't much better. This place was hot and windy, and we'd just paid $12.00 in a place where our tent would likely blow over.
We tried a different camp area. A park employee listened to our tale, and suggested the Trout Creek area, which he said had no wind. We found it, and indeed, the ground was softer and there was no wind. There was also lots and lots of bugs. Mosquitoes.
Now, the mosquitoes out west pale in comparison to Wisconsin mosquitos. Wisconsin mosquitoes have a work ethic that few could muster. J even suggested kidnapping a few Wyoming mosquitoes and bringing them back for an interbreeding program to temper the Wisconsin stock. However, it was hot. Heat and mosquitoes together is a combination that comprises my own special version of hell. I spoke with a drunken Wyomingian Packer fan who assured me that "Favre would be back!". A baby cried nearby and I agreed. This place sucked.
I tried slapping them. I tried hanging out in the hot tent. I tried to find the bug repellent. I finally convinced J to go to town, to get out of this pit, and maybe see a movie. We got there after the movies had started. Just another nail in our coffin.
That's how we ended up in Cody, WY, visiting a Wal-Mart for bug spray at 8PM. This place was a pit, and that's saying something since I don't have a really high opinion of most Wal-Marts. The bathrooms were disgusting. I'd rather use the pit toilets at the campground than there. They moved the bug spray from Camping to something called Household Supplies, and we couldn't find it, even with the help of two employees. (Eventually we did find it.)
We had both reached our trip breaking point.
It was at that point decided that we'd see the Museum the next day, and maybe a couple other things, but then we'd start to head home. We were out of vacation juice. Cody had broken us. ¶ 11:16 AM
And then, in 1993, a couple of geologists found fossils poking up through a dark layer of rock in a nearby ranch.
The rich guy bought the ranch and they started to exacavate and they keep pulling really amazing dinosaur bones out of the mountain. We got to visit the dinosaur dig and our guide was an older gentleman by the name of John who knew almost everything that there was to know about this particular site.
Then we got on the road.
We were headed for Cody, WY. On the way, we saw the Rocky Mountains rising to our left, and the land turned more arid, more rocky, more deserty. Cody is only 50 or miles from Yellowstone. We had decided against making that final trek there because we'd been warned about road construction and heavy crowds, but Cody, well, maybe Cody wouldn't be so bad.I don't know why we thought that.
Cody was created as a tourist town to deal with the traffic heading to Yellowstone, to capitalize on the legend of William Cody (aka Buffalo Bill), to basically spread tourism dollars a little eastward from Yellowstone. It has a long Downtown area with little boutique shops designed to slurp money from your wallet at an alarming rate.
I'd seen a sign for Buffalo Bill State Park. State Parks, usually, are pretty nice and cheap places to camp. Cheap being the most important word there. $12.00 a night cheap, to be exact. The park itself is 15 miles on the other side of Cody, and built on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, which was created by the damming of a canyon river. The resulting lake was large and treeless, but it would be a good place to camp, right?
Wrong.
The first place we tried to set up our tent at was a flat and baked hard slab of adobe mud. We tried to push our tent stakes in and they wouldn't budge. We ended up finding rocks and using them, cavemen style, to pound the stakes down. It was then we noticed the wind. Not just a wind, but a gale, coming across the reservoir and bending the tent poles like we were in a hurricane. J was frustrated and I wasn't much better. This place was hot and windy, and we'd just paid $12.00 in a place where our tent would likely blow over.
We tried a different camp area. A park employee listened to our tale, and suggested the Trout Creek area, which he said had no wind. We found it, and indeed, the ground was softer and there was no wind. There was also lots and lots of bugs. Mosquitoes.
Now, the mosquitoes out west pale in comparison to Wisconsin mosquitos. Wisconsin mosquitoes have a work ethic that few could muster. J even suggested kidnapping a few Wyoming mosquitoes and bringing them back for an interbreeding program to temper the Wisconsin stock. However, it was hot. Heat and mosquitoes together is a combination that comprises my own special version of hell. I spoke with a drunken Wyomingian Packer fan who assured me that "Favre would be back!". A baby cried nearby and I agreed. This place sucked.
I tried slapping them. I tried hanging out in the hot tent. I tried to find the bug repellent. I finally convinced J to go to town, to get out of this pit, and maybe see a movie. We got there after the movies had started. Just another nail in our coffin.
That's how we ended up in Cody, WY, visiting a Wal-Mart for bug spray at 8PM. This place was a pit, and that's saying something since I don't have a really high opinion of most Wal-Marts. The bathrooms were disgusting. I'd rather use the pit toilets at the campground than there. They moved the bug spray from Camping to something called Household Supplies, and we couldn't find it, even with the help of two employees. (Eventually we did find it.)
We had both reached our trip breaking point.
It was at that point decided that we'd see the Museum the next day, and maybe a couple other things, but then we'd start to head home. We were out of vacation juice. Cody had broken us. ¶ 11:16 AM
