July 21st
We got up in the morning and packed up and headed to the Irma, hoping the breakfast buffet would be spectacular. Spoiler alert....it was not. When we got there, it was completely dead. Our server was the same one we had had the day before with lunch. Oh goody. A ordered pancakes from the a la cart menu. The buffet was supposed to have "Irma potatoes" which were supposed to be really good, along with things like biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon, etc. Just as we were seated, a busload of senior citizens came in and took up about half the restaurant. Their tour guide was LOUDLY telling them all they could sit anywhere where there was a menu, and shuttling them in like cattle. We ran to get our first plates before this group could wipe out the offerings. The eggs were ok, but the potatoes were brown and smelled burnt. They obviously burned the butter that they cooked those potatoes in....they should not have been served! Thankfully, the senior tour group cleaned those out so when I went back, there was a new pan full and they were much better. The food was ok, but nothing special, and A's pancakes took FOREVER. Even with having to wait in a long line for our second plates, we had them long before he had his pancakes. We kept asking the server if they were coming soon...she was no better than she had been the day before. And since we were doing mostly buffet and all she had to do was bring drinks and a plate of pancakes, I didn't feel too bad when I gave her smaller tip than usual. I'm a good tipper...I've been a server and I can honestly say I wasn't good at it. But I TRIED. This girl really didn't seem to care. She didn't come to check on us or ask us if everything was ok, she forgot things like straws and napkins and then you had to flag her down when you saw her, IF you saw her. I know servers don't get a regular wage and have to rely on tips, but if you are not going to actually SERVE your customers, you can't expect to make good tips, and especially with buffets where there isn't a whole LOT of serving, what you DO serve, you'd better be good at. At least refill drinks!! I'd never stiff a server, but I think I only gave her 15% or just under and that's low for me. We left with food in our bellies, but we should have gone back to Granny's. Let this be a lesson to you....should you ever visit the Yellowstone area and stay in Cody, skip the overpriced Irma and go to Granny's!!
Now we were on the road to Thermopolis. Along the way was the Hot Springs State Park and there was a Petroglyph site I wanted to see. Wyoming is apparently full of these sites, but this one is pretty accessible, even to non-hikers. There's a path, though not a wide one. I wouldn't suggest trying to access it in a wheelchair, but you don't have to be avid hikers to do this loop. I had a map, but I think my daughter maybe claimed it for her collection. This is the Legend Rock site. I will say it was a little confusing to find. We had set the GPS, but it couldn't find Legend Rock, only the Hot Springs State park, so once we were in the park, we had to rely on signage, and the sign came up out of nowhere....there were no signs saying "Legend Rock, so many miles" or "Take exit bla bla". I saw a sign coming up so we slowed down, and sure enough it was the sign that basically said "Turn here" and you had to make a pretty sharp turn. Then there's a sign that says from October to May, you have to go to the State Park visitor center to get a key to access the site. We saw "Pick up key at visitors center" and started to turn around when A said "But....it says October to May....it's July. Shouldn't it just be open right now?" He was right....so off we went.
When we got to the site, there was a sort of visitors center there, but it was all boarded up and locked, but the outhouses were accessible. Thank goodness we had hand sanitizer, because there were no sinks, the hand sanitizer dispensers were empty, and the bathrooms weren't very clean. The sun was blazing, so after our bathroom break, we slathered on the sunscreen. There was a little dropbox thing with maps in it, and a guestbook to register your visit. The trail is I think it said like a quarter of a mile? Not far at all. It said to beware of rattle snakes...we saw none. I suspect they were relaxing in some shade, and as we were on a trail in the blazing sun, they weren't going to bother us. There WAS a lot of cactus to watch out for.
Excuse my shadow
Without the map, I'm not sure what everything is...there are markers that are numbered and each one tells you on the map when it's estimated to have been carved and what they think it represents.
This one has several things. Left is some sort of alien-like figure, in the middle is a bird and some human-like figures, and to the right is probably a deer. Below the deer is some sort of creature again, but I don't know what it s.
No idea what these are, but I took these with my phone because I needed to zoom in to see the details.
There were a bunch of nests in the rocks up above:
This one taken with the camera, you can just see them up in the top overhang of rocks:
And zoomed in with the phone:
There were a lot more of the carvings, but they were more of the same, so I don't need to post pictures of everything. It was cool to see though, and for minimal effort, we agreed it was worth the stop. We'd needed the bathroom break anyway. I wish the visitor center had been open, but they had put the maps in the little box so you could grab one. And I got the impression that was really the only reason the little center is there for.
Then it was back on the road to Thermopolis. There were 2 things we wanted to see here. The Hot Springs museum and the Dinosaur Center. Thermop is not a huge town...its claim to fame are the natural hot springs there. There's a pool there, and I've been there as a kid, but I remembered it being really crowded, and since we were limited on time, we decided to skip that. Besides our hotel had a pool fed by the springs.
The Museum was....cluttered. It was FULL of artifacts, but it looked like they had just displayed everything ever donated with no real discernment about dating of them or shape they were in. There was a little scavenger hunt that was a little confusing. It showed pictograms of what you were supposed to find, with a one or two word label. "Victrola" for example, which showed a little record player thing with the big flared horn where the sound comes out. The problem was that there were several "phonographs" throughout the museum, only one of which had the large horn thing, and it wasn't labeled as a victrola, and it was tucked back in a corner of a display in a side room that you couldn't actually enter....you could only stand at the rope and crane your neck around. We weren't sure that was the one they meant, but we checked it off anyway, and it turned out we were right. Another thing on the list was "saddle". But there were about 50 saddles distributed through about 10 different displays. At least those were easy to find. Arrowhead was another one....they had 3 full walls plus several display cases that were FULL of arrowheads. THOUSANDS of arrowheads. You'd have to be blind not to find them. And the most disturbing item: a hair wreath. Now, what was shown on the page and what it actually was were two different things. What it showed was a wreath of flowers you would wear in your hair. What it WAS, was a decorative wreath made of human hair.
Not my picture:
There was a cool cocacola display:
And there was an outdoor display of an old school house, a poverty house (I think that's what they called it) just a shack really, and some old farming equipment.
I still have yet to see any Bighorn Sheep in YNP. Nice pics from Tower Falls. We haven’t been there since 2005. The way you walked was closed during that visit, so we had the brilliant idea to hike all the way down to the bottom. With the animal jams on the roads, we’ve started just slowing down and seeing if people walking will tell us what’s there. It’s almost always an elk or bison. 
