Sunday, September 9, 2007
John Osgood's back yard, Cody, WY - Aug 2-18
Not many people who invite us to park at their homes realize just how big our RV is, so we were a little skeptical when John Osgood issued an invitation to visit him in Cody. But John usually knows what he is talking about, so we decided to check it out. There was plenty of room beside a row of trees that provided good shade for most of the day -- especially nice since we couldn't use our A/C.
John Osgood was one of two enforcement rangers at Chaco Culture NHP the first year we volunteered there. He had the reputation of being strictly rules-oriented -- "if John noticed that he was speeding, he would give himself a ticket" is how one ranger described him. But as we grew to know John, we realized that he would always try to engage the offender in conversation, and would make his own decisions based on their side of the story. He knew every regulation by heart, but would try to be fair & open when dealing with the public. He was attracted to Cody because he can walk or bicycle almost everywhere, and is currently building a solar array to send energy back to the grid.
Our first day here was Willie's birthday & John treated us both to dinner at a new "upscale" restaurant in Cody. Before dinner, he invited us to yoga, which of course we immediately accepted. The instructor, who is excellent, just started classes in Cody a couple of months ago. The next evening (Friday) we walked to a nearby park after dinner, just in time for the start of the 12th annual Wild West Balloon Fest, a 3-day event in Cody. 
Friday night they had a "glow", which means that the balloons were inflated at dusk, and the burners were run simultaneously so people could OOOH and AAAH at them glowing in the almost-dark. This is especially hard on the balloon, so only about half the entrants participated. Unfortunately, storm clouds rolling in causing a quick end to this event. Saturday morning's strong winds also caused cancellation of that day's events, despite our arrival before 6 am! With 24 entrants, WWBF is one of the smaller hot-air balloon festivals, but that allows spectators the opportunity to chat with the pilots, and to help crew. 
Sunday morning dawned clear and fairly calm, so all systems were go. We were asked to crew for Kevin, an unmoneyed single guy from Louisiana, who was trying to break into the close-knit and fairly affluent hot-air community. What a character! He drives a truck that he sleeps in and can run on vegetable oil, which he picks up at restaurants along the way, straining it himself. He was a recent graduate of Oberlin College and built and sewed his entire basket & balloon. The main event of the day was a Hare & Hound, where one balloon, the Hare, sets off and after a while lands, and the Hound balloons give chase. 
The Hounds can't start filling their balloons until the Hare in actually in the air. The Hound that lands closest to the Hare wins. 
We helped Kevin get his balloon launched and then drove the chase vehicle (his unusual truck!). Kevin did quite well, but unfortunately was disqualified because he touched ground when he shouldn't have. We didn't totally understand the event, but it was fun to be part of it!
Saturday John drove us up to Bighorn Canyon NRA. The 71-mile-long Bighorn Lake is the main attraction for most people, and we did go swimming at one of the lifeguarded areas, but we also enjoyed the dramatic cliffs that enclose the reservoir, and managed to see bighorn sheep and a number of wild horses.
One of the main attractions in Cody is the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, which is actually five museums housed in one large building: Cody Firearms Museum, Whitney Gallery of Western Art, Plains Indian Museum, Buffalo Bill Museum, and Draper Museum of Natural History. Because there is so much to see, the single entrance fee is good for two days, and we spent most of two days there. 
It is a wonderful museum and well worth the price, but after two days, we were certainly done with museums for a while!While visiting the Historical Center we heard about the Buffalo Bill Shootout -- an annual trap-shooting contest. We decided we might as well drive over and see what was going on. Trap shooting is not exactly a spectator sport, although it is a little hypnotic once you start. Contestants rotate through who knows how many stations, each with two trap launchers positioned to test the skills of the shooters, who get six shots (three sets of two). We watched three or four teams pass by one station before calling it quits. Most of the shooters were men, but there were a few women. Only one woman and two men got all six at our station. Coincidentally, the next morning we heard on NPR that a woman had won the Wyoming trap-shooting championship for the fifth straight year. Evidently she regularly shoots 200 in a row.
Coincident with our stay was a performance by the summer stock group Montana Shakespeare in the Park, "Merry Wives of Windsor." We enjoyed it so much that the next night we drove 30 miles to Powell for their performance of "Heartbreak House" by George Bernard Shaw. A single stage, slightly modified, worked well for both productions, and the acting was quite solid.
Cody was founded by "Buffalo Bill" Cody as a gateway to Yellowstone NP, the world's first national park, set aside in 1872 to preserve its incredible beauty. The thousands of displays that comprise the world's largest thermal basins, now the park's biggest draw, were secondary. 
Yellowstone is so large that if you took one photo per square mile you would have over 3400 pictures. We drove into Yellowstone twice, through the East and Northeast Entrances. On our first trip we first visited Grant Village campground to meet Mike & Scott, campground hosts we had been emailing. They enjoy hosting so much we are seriously considering submitting our names for consideration next year. They suggested we get the estimated eruption times for the major geysers, and plan the rest of our visit accordingly. Only Old Faithful looked promising, and we didn't really feel like standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others after being the only ones watching Old Faithful when we visited in the winter. Instead, we toured West Thumb Geyser Basin, then drove north to try to see trumpeter swans on the Firehole River, but ran into a complete traffic standstill about a mile north of Biscuit Basin. We quickly turned around and went back to Biscuit and then on to Black Sand Basin, which were both enjoyable and quite uncrowded. Afterwards we had a leisurely drive back to Cody, spotting a moose along the way.The following day we were in downtown Cody with John and noticed a lot of smoke on the western horizon. We asked around and learned that the East Entrance had been closed due to a forest fire. Indeed, every night it seemed that there was a new fire in Montana or Wyoming, mostly lightning-caused. At last count there were at least 13 different major fires in Montana alone. East Entrance was reopened for one day after they received 0.6" of rain, but was closed again the following day when winds caused the fire to flare up again.
Our second visit to Yellowstone meant driving up the Chief Joseph Hwy -- truly one of the most scenic roads in America. Highlights include a 360-degree panorama from Dead Indian Pass, then a incredible winding 10% grade down to Sunlight Bridge, across Sunlight Gorge. We definitely will NOT EVER take our trailer into Yellowstone via this route! Our plan was to lunch at Cooke City outside the entrance to Yellowstone, and also check out the fudge (all tourist towns have fudge, right?), but driving through, we didn't see a single restaurant that looked appealing, and no signs for fudge. A few miles further, just outside the entrance, is little Silver Gate, which is a real "don't blink" kind of town. Luckily we didn't and spotted a cute little log-cabin restaurant with a wide variety of mostly vegetarian food. In Montana! The food was yummy, and we happily headed off towards Yellowstone, where we got to go to the head of the line because of our Golden Age pass. 
We pulled off at Baronette Peak after noticing a group of people with spotting scopes that turned out to be a guided tour looking for mountain goats. We dragged out our binocs & not 60 seconds later had spotted 3 or 4 where no one else was looking. They were all suitably pleased and allowed us to look through their scopes. Further down the road we drove into Lamar Valley, one of the greatest animal preserves on earth. This large, flat, tranquil valley is one of the least-visited areas of the park, perhaps explaining why it is still so Eden-like. We encountered one traffic slow-down, where perhaps 20 cars had pulled over to watch a grizzly bear eating a bison carcass. 
Anywhere else in the park would have meant an hour's delay, but here we were able to slow down, binocle the scene (at a safe distance!), snap a few pictures, and continue on our way to Tower Fall and Yellowstone Canyon. What a contrast! Weaving our truck through a sea of cars trying to park as close as possible so they could jump out, dash to the falls (click), check one more item off their list, and disappear in a cloud of smoke & dust. We strolled over and truly viewed the falls (click), then strolled back to the Visitor Center where we bought a couple of ice creams (yum!). We then hiked a half-mile straight up to the campground, where we decided we would probably not like to be hosts, then back down, spotting a MacGillivrey's warbler -- not a lifer, but VERY cute. 
We then started back home, but quickly got caught in a traffic jam, much worse than before. When we finally reached the point of interest, all we could see was a single coyote off to the right of the road in some long grass. Willie took a couple of pictures just to say we did, but it wasn't until we got home and really looked at them that we realized (and should have known by the traffic jam) that what we were looking at was a collared & ear-tagged wolf! Yowza!! What a treat!
Six miles west of Cody at the top of Shoshone Canyon stands the Buffalo Bill Dam. "Buffalo Bill" originally promoted the idea of using water from the Shoshone River to irrigate the land east of Cody, thousands of acres of fertile soil that receives less than 10" water per year. The Bureau of Reclamation made this one of the first three major dams to construct, and work started in October 1905. The project quickly turned into a nightmare -- because of spring/summer snowmelt & flooding, construction could only proceed in the fall & winter. Winters proved unusually cold & snowy, and flood waters were higher than expected, destroying existing work & delaying progress even further. The original contractor went broke less than a year into the project, as did two more after taking over. The last bucket of concrete was poured Jan 1910 in 20-below weather. There is a Visitor Center, added in 1993 as part of enlarging the dam, which we drove to and were suitably awed.
Also coincident with our stay was the motorcycle gathering at Sturgis, SD. What this means, basically, is a lot of spill-over of late-comers and early-leavers. Everywhere you go there are bikes -- bikes in Cody, bikes in Yellowstone, bikes on the road, bikes in parking lots. Most of them Harleys. Most of them loud. And quite a few with little respect for the rules of the road. I can't tell you the number of times we were passed on a double-yellow by a bike or even a group of bikes. I really, really got fed up with it really, really fast.We found a nice little duplicate bridge game in Powell and went once from Cody and, since we enjoyed it so much, again from our next stop in Lovell. It was about the same distance from each place. We won the first time -- our first master points since early July -- and did mediocre the second. Both times were fun!
John was such a great host that we started being very conservative with our black water sewage tank. We could empty the gray (dishwater & shower water) on the ground to water his trees, and that is usually the main problem, so it helped extend our stay. There were several more yoga classes that we wanted to attend, so we spent another week parked in his yard, catching up on relaxing and doing gentle sightseeing around the town. We enjoy the town of Cody a lot and can see why John is so happy here. We also think it would be way too cold in the winter!!
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 10:12 PM 
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