Yellowstone - Cody, Wyoming

Wednesday, Sept. 15. We left the park this morning to drive to Cody, Wyoming. We made a loop drive out of this 12-hour day, going out the East Entrance and returning through the Northeast Entrance. At one overlook, we found this jaw bone of some unidentified animal, and a dental floss strip on the ground beside it. We thought that was an interesting combination.

We didn't see any wildlife in the park, but shortly after we were outside the entrance, in the Shoshone National Forest, we stopped at a little gift shop and there were 4 deer right beside, and crossing, the road as we left.

We drove along the Shoshone River in the Shoshone National Forest for several miles. This was the first national forest, and was designated that by President Benjamin Harrison. Joe is very impressed with the vastness of these mountains.

He likes to take these self-portraits whenever he can find something to set the camera on, then he has 10 seconds to run over to get in the picture. He was devastated to learn that he wasn't fast enough to make it this time -- he thought he ran really fast.

I really need a video of him running over to get in these pictures, as well as some of the positions he gets in trying to get the camera set up. Oh well, it was a good try.
We came by the Buyffalo Bill State Park and Reservoir. We stopped for a short visit at the dam and watched part of the movie about its construction.

Then we drove on into Cody, which is a cute little cowboy town, with a rodeo every night during the summer. We would have liked to spend more time here, but we ate at McDonalds so I could post two days of blogs and that took way too long, so we had to cut the visit here short. There was a couple of museums here we were interested in --the Dug Up Gun Museum and Buffalo Bill Historical Center, so if we ever come through here again, that's something we can look forward to.

We drove out of Cody on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, which was another awesome drive. Chief Joseph was leading the Nez Perce Indians over the mountains and through the pass to outrun the Army with his clan of 600 Indians and 2000 horses to get to Canada. There is a lot of history about this route.

This highway connected with the Beartooth Highway, which was another pretty mountainous highway. We came upon 3 bighorn sheep grazing in the rocks here.

After we got back in the park, we encountered a buffalo jam! These animals are so funny -- they just mosey along, not caring if they are in the road or not, and not at all concerned about the traffic they are stopping. It probably took us 20 minutes to get through this pack.

It was getting close to dusk by now and harder to see, but we did see a big bull elk with 5 cows, and a couple of deer. We saw a sign that said there was a controlled fire in the park, and we were glad we noticed that sign because we could see the flames a few miles later.

We put in 230 miles in the car, and 12 hours. We were pretty tired when we got back to camp - 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., too late for us old folks. But it was another great day, and we are looking forward to more of the same tomorrow.