Cody, Day 4, Cody, The Wild Wild West

After a morning of enjoying our hotel time and being city slicker bums, we ventured out to see the town of Cody, named for "Buffalo Bill" William Cody. After my sweet hour of me-time, I had spent several hours of me and my guys time as I am bunking with the boys. Since we cut cable they are drawn to tv like moths to a flame, sucking away the hours. (And me, right there with them.) We watched part of The Matrix and part of Iron Man on Spike tv and far too many and explosives and commercials about a naked candy bar before I declared that "time was awastin" and that we needed to "git" while the sun was still shinin'.

 

First stop, lunch at the historic Irma hotel. (We vetoed requests for Pizza Hut and Wendy's with "someday you will thank me for this".)

A phrase from "Gaston" comes to mind:

"I use antlers in all of my decorating...."

Belly up to the bar boys for some ice cold pop

I post cantankerous sour-face photos, to show my children one future day when they are parents, that they too acted like this. There is romantic fantasy and there is reality, even on the sweetest of family reunions.

The museum actually was great once they got inside.

We especially liked the natural history museum.

Our favorite yellow-bellied varmint (the beaver-squirrel)

Second thoughts about encountering grizzlies in the great outdoors, (especially as we didn't buy the $50 can of bear spray!)

A highlight of the raptors lecture was watching a ferocious mama robin dive-bomb this educator's head during the presentation. She was not happy to see a predator nearby her nest and squawked through the entire lesson.

Incredible Native American beadwork

It's a little bit surreal to walk into the cultural museums of places that you have only studied about in school or seen in movies. The soundtracks of Legends of the Fall and Dances With Wolves have been bouncing around in my head as I take in the sights. The jewelry store where I stopped to buy a charm bracelet for my daughter used to be a bank and had once been robbed by outlaws. My kids are asking for cowboy boots and cowboy hats. We might come home talking like this:

First rodeo for all of us.

We learned new ranching terms tonight. A header ropes the horns of a steer and a heeler ropes the hooves. We especially liked sitting in the "Buzzards' Roost" section of the corral where we could see all the action of the bull riders before they came out of the chutes.

Yehaw!

No spurs allowed on the inflatables? Aw, shucks!

Tomorrow we head to the ranch to learn how it's done.

Glad we're traveling in a climate-controlled SUV over those mountains as we head further west! Kids, you think four hours in the car is a hardship? Back when I was a kid....