Wild wild west, a real cliffhanger! Trip report

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th, continued....

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I think this MIGHT be from the overlook at the top that we did later, but I'm just not sure. In any case, it's a great view.
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Now, I'm from Wyoming, which is pretty high in elevation on its own, but we're up in the mountains now, AND I've lived in the Netherlands for the past 20 years, which is at sea level. We were THIRSTY and completely overheated after hiking around. We decided to head to the village and get some lunch and drinks. We weren't particularly hungry, and food service in the park is majorly expensive, so we decided on snacks. When it was our turn, the cashier looked at us with a bit of alarm and kind of indicated that we looked a bit worse for the wear and we needed to hydrate and cool down. I don't remember his exact words, but it was obvious that he thought we needed a break. And a LOT of water. Snacks purchased, we went outside and sat on a retaining wall and ate. We were trying to figure out where to go next. I wanted a big bottle of water that I could refill as needed, so I went back in, and the guy said I looked better already. I asked where the best place was to find Bighorn sheep. One of the cashiers was a photographer and said I should head up towards tower falls. It's a rocky area between....I think she said maybe Obsidian? and Calcite? on the road to Tower Falls that would be our best bet. She said there were several pull-offs up there where we could look. Armed with our water and our binoculars, we set off.

E promptly fell asleep. We drove, and we looked, and we pulled off at all the little spots and found nothing but some beautiful views. First picture taken with the camera, 2nd with the phone.
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And then we were at Tower Falls. E was still asleep and I could not get her to wake up. I figured she'd wake up eventually and she'd get to see this, but she slept right through. It's a bit of a hike to the viewing area, but it's pretty much flat the whole way, so it wasn't bad at all.
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First with the camera, this time actually zoomed in. Not sure how I got it to focus. And then with my phone.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th, continued...

We decided to turn around and go back, hoping the Bighorn sheep would show themselves. Besides, I hadn't gotten a picture of Liberty Cap in Mammoth, and if we continued on around the loop, we'd be on the wrong side to get back to our hotel, and it was getting on in the afternoon. So down we went.

No bighorn sheep, but as we got into the village, we did see this guy. And then his mama showed up. I apologize for the bad pictures. My husband refused to actually stop, and after I had taken these two shots, another car came up behind us and my husband wasn't willing to slow traffic down for me to get better ones, so this is what I got.292951006_1030679360924235_4669363023306082404_n.jpg293557969_297179899262492_5748494412837640833_n.jpg

Up to this point, we had seen exactly one bison off in the distance. We were wondering where all the wildlife was!!

Liberty Cap
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Now that we knew there was an overlook up at the top, we decided to head up there. You can actually drive through. It's a one way drive, but it's really pretty.IMG_1643.JPGIMG_1647.JPGIMG_1636.JPGIMG_1637.JPGIMG_1641.JPGIMG_1643.JPG

It was hard getting good pictures because we were driving through and my husband won't really slow down, and I didn't have time to change the settings on my camera to get good shots, so some of them are overexposed. It's prettier in reality.
 

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Songbird76

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Original Poster
July 17th, continued...


My husband was about parked out. He was ready to call it a day, though it was still early afternoon. I was anxious that we wouldn't get to see much at this rate. I suggested we go to Norris Geyser Basin on the way out to complete the road north of the junction that would take us back to the hotel. Otherwise, we'd have to do it tomorrow and then double back. He agreed, but handed me the car keys because he was done driving for the day. Fair enough....he had driven all morning.

We walked to Emerald Springs, which was the most beautiful thermal pool I had ever seen. I'm reasonably certain we never visited this one with my mom. It was such a vibrant color, and definitely earned its name!!IMG_1650.JPGIMG_1649.JPG293100185_573701134405669_8257738277763521803_n.jpg

Then we walked on to Steamboat geyser.

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Then we went to the overlook of the basin. I was pretty tired, and it was really hot and the sun was shining full blast and I decided not to walk down as far as my husband did. The kids stayed up at the top.

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This one is really zoomed in.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th, continued...

As we hit the junction, it was slow going. There was a really big jam on the road. People were stopped on the sides all the way through, walking along, looking. We couldn't see anything and my husband does not believe in stopping along the roadside to view animals. So I just kept going, slowly, towards our destination. I don't think my husband gets that that's common....that's how you know there's something to see. When there's a whole line of cars pulled over, there's probably something to see. We never did see anything. Of course I had to keep my eyes on the road, but no one else saw anything except a couple of park employees, and who knows what they were doing there. Traffic was backed up for miles, apparently to see some humans with clipboards.

There was really only one restaurant in West Yellowstone that looked appetizing for dinner. So we went to Canyon Street Grille. It's super cute. A 50s style diner with all sorts of stuff on the walls.

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It's kind of hard to see, but around the room was a little shelf at the top of the wall where a little train set was placed, and there were little labels for different cities across America along that shelf.


E and I got the french dip and tater tots, we got mozzarella sticks and onion rings to share, my husband got a bowl of chili and I think we probably got fries for A, though I don't have it in my notes, so maybe not? I know he ate the mozz sticks. E and I both got chocolate shakes.

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That was the end to our first Yellowstone day. We hit the sack pretty early.
 

HouCuseChickie

Well-Known Member
So fun to see pics from one of our favorite places 😍 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.

I remember having a laundry moment in West Yellowstone too. I found a good place but they closed super early, so we were taking a speed team approach to it. Great to see Canyon Street Grill. I think we ate at the booth in your 4th pic. Yum!
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 18th

This morning we were going to try out the other restaurant for breakfast. It was a cute place, but I don't seem to have any pictures....I do remember it being pretty dark in there, so maybe that's why. I want to say it was called 3 bears or something? I remember we ordered a cinnamon roll, and it was fine, and I'm pretty sure I got a side of hashbrowns that was miniscule. I don't remember what my husband got, because I don't think they had red chilli. The glass of milk was tiny, and none of the food was fantastic. We should have gone back to the Timberline.

We went back to the hotel and packed up and headed for Yellowstone, this time to do the Southern loop. Our priorities were Old Faithful geyser and the viewing areas for the upper and lower falls. (Inspiration and artist point) Grand Prismatic was a possibility, but not necessarily a must do.

Now don't get me wrong. Old faithful is impressive with it's massive spout of water, and Grand Prismatic is really huge, but there are some really under-rated hidden gems in Yellowstone that no one talks about! I remember my mom always wanting to find Morning Glory pool and we hiked out one trip and it was pretty, though small. Hiking this time wasn't really an option for us because A is not a hiker. Anything that takes more than about 15 minutes is probably going to be a no-go.

The turnoff for Grand Prismatic was backed up FOREVER. We skipped it and instead went to the West Thumb Geyser basin, and the Biscuit Basin, which were stand outs to me! It was a bit frustrating that some of the things were lacking signage, and others it was hard to tell which sign went with which feature, so some of these might be mislabled.

I believe this is the Abyss pool in the West Thumb basin
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And this is probably Spasm Geyer, which was my favorite.
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And I don't think there's a name for this one, but it looks neat.
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Then we moved on to the Biscuit basin

I found my new favorite pool. Sapphire Pool....my pictures do not do it justice. It's such a vibrant shade of blue!!

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Some of these I don't remember names for, and I remember some didn't have signs and we just named them ourselves.

I'm pretty sure this one is Shell Spring:
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Don't know what this was called?

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This one we decided should be called Crystal spring because it was so clear.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 18th, continued...

More from Biscuit basin

Avoca Geyser
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This one wasn't marked. What I can find online seems to indicate West Geyser?
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While we were walking around, my husband had been parking and then he joined us and said he had found a car with a license plate from Switzerland. Switzerland!!!

Then we moved on to Old Faithful. It was going to be a while, so we grabbed some snacks and souveniers, and sat outside on the porch of the giftshop there. There was a large family including siblings with their children and the little cousins were climbing on the stairs and such, and one of the kids had a little bowl of ice cream with which he was taunting his cousin. He held out a spoonful and made her chase him, her mouth hanging open trying to get the spoon in her mouth as he kept moving. Finally one of the parents took pity on her and gave her a bit from theirs.

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Then we headed for the falls! Yellowstone Lake is HUGE!!! This is one of many such pictures taken on the drive to the falls. It goes on forever!


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The first real wildlife we saw in Yellowstone:
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And the other falls....I never remember which is upper and which is lower.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 18th, Continued...

With the camera, since I wanted some not zoomed in at all.

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My husband was ready to be done. I had already taken over the driving and he was telling me I should turn around out of this one spot, but I thought it seemed like a one way, so I refused....good thing, too....I was right. We decided to head to Cody. On the way down, there was a herd of what I THINK were elk. People were stopped along the road, but there was a ranger trying to get everyone moving again and not letting more people stop, and my husband wouldn't have let me anyway. I had to watch the road, so I didn't get to see what they were, but the color was wrong for deer, and they seemed too small for moose. Obviously I couldn't take pictures, and my husband was not wanting to try to take any from the passenger side, since they were across the road. So no pictures of them, and we'll never know for sure what they were.

I did make him take pictures on the way to Cody, but he took them with his phone and I don't have them.

When we got to Cody, we went to dinner at the Irma. They have a Prime Rib buffet, but we were a little late for that, so we decided to order off the a la carte menu. I wanted to order chicken pot pie, but they were out. So I ordered the Prime Rib without the buffet, my husband had ribs, my daughter had spaghetti with meatballs, and I think we went to McDonalds for A. I also ordered cheesecake for dessert....and got the world's smallest slice of cheesecake. It was barely wider than the fork! Sad little dessert.

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I remember our server was really good, and the food was good, if a little overpriced for what we got.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Ok, I cheated and stole pictures from my husband's facebook.

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After dinner, we went to check into our hotel, the Beartooth Inn. The gal at the front desk was fun, and she explained that our room had doors both to the hallway inside the building, and to the parking lot outside. Our best bet was to drive around and park outside the door to unload. Only the keycard didn't work on that door, so I went around inside, opened the door from the inside, and we unloaded through the now open door.

The pillows were pretty flat, but it was ok other than that. I had kind of expected a bit more considering the price, BUT this was Cody, and Cody is kind of a tourist trap.

Time to hit the hay!
 

fractal

Well-Known Member
July 18th, continued...

More from Biscuit basin

Avoca Geyser
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This one wasn't marked. What I can find online seems to indicate West Geyser?
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While we were walking around, my husband had been parking and then he joined us and said he had found a car with a license plate from Switzerland. Switzerland!!!

Then we moved on to Old Faithful. It was going to be a while, so we grabbed some snacks and souveniers, and sat outside on the porch of the giftshop there. There was a large family including siblings with their children and the little cousins were climbing on the stairs and such, and one of the kids had a little bowl of ice cream with which he was taunting his cousin. He held out a spoonful and made her chase him, her mouth hanging open trying to get the spoon in her mouth as he kept moving. Finally one of the parents took pity on her and gave her a bit from theirs.

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Then we headed for the falls! Yellowstone Lake is HUGE!!! This is one of many such pictures taken on the drive to the falls. It goes on forever!


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The first real wildlife we saw in Yellowstone:
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And the other falls....I never remember which is upper and which is lower.
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Didn't know Yellowstone even had a lake much less one that big. Enjoying the photos of the waterfall and geyser.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 19th

I have some friends who live in Cody or in the area near it, and after several days of touristing, I had planned in a bit of a break. There are some cool things in the area, and I didn't over-plan. We just kind of played it by ear. If I remember correctly, we went to a place called Granny's for breakfast. Our server was so much fun. We decided she might just be granny herself, and she was so great. We had had to wait for a while for a table...apparently Granny's is THE place to be for breakfast!! There was a waiting list, but I think it was only about a 15 minute wait. I know we got a cinnamon roll....what I don't know is if E and I each got our own, or got one to share. I think we each got one. Our server told me I was eating it wrong! "You're supposed to start in the middle because that's the best part! That way if you can't finish it, you've already eaten the best part!" I told her I liked to save the best for last. "Then you'd better eat the WHOLE THING!" she reprimanded. Yes Ma'am. I know my husband got a burrito, and I think A got pancakes. We had slept in this morning and were pretty late to breakfast, so we decided to make it brunch and add in a sampler that had onion rings and mozzarella sticks and I think there was something else...maybe mushrooms? I don't remember. Oh, yep...the menu online says mushrooms. Have I mentioned I love Google? Google is my friend.
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After brunch, we hit the local museum, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. This is a pretty amazing museum and definitely worth the time to explore it. Plan on taking at least 2 days if you are a museum person like I am. There are basically 5 different museums in one. One museum is all about Buffalo Bill Cody...his life, his wild west show, his children, etc. He was VERY progressive for his time, which I didn't know. There's also a very disturbing cartoon video of how his show came to be. It was a very strange video. E and I spent so much time in this museum that we didn't have much time to explore the Draper Natural History Museum before going to the Raptor Experience. And since we have NO sense of direction, we got lost in the draper museum and were almost late to the Raptor show! But both museums were so well done and very cool. We had lost the boys....probably more accurate to say the boys ditched us early on in the Buffalo Bill museum, because we were looking at everything and reading all the signs and the boys aren't museum nerds. They went through 4 museums in the time we went through 1 and a quarter. They kind of just stroll through and look wherever their eyes land and that's it. They don't read the info or watch all the videos, etc.

The Raptor show is really neat. I'm not really a bird person...if I'm going to skip something in the zoo, it's probably going to be the birds. But this was really cool. It's all birds of prey, and they change the birds out every show, so you don't know which birds you'll meet. This afternoon, our host was I think named Brandon? He was really funny and has been working with the birds for several years, so he really knows what he's talking about. He told lots of jokes and just had the whole audience engaged in what he was saying and we learned a lot. We now have a family joke every time we see any kind of bird. "It's probably a red-tailed hawk!" Brandon told us how to identify a red-tailed hawk by the patterns in its feathers, etc and he said they were pretty common and he said we could now impress our friends by identifying the red-tailed hawk. Besides, they are so common, that in all likelyhood, if you see a bird in the wild that is too far away to see its feather patterns, it's probably still a red-tailed hawk, and if not, your friends aren't going to know. So tell them it's a red-tailed hawk and you'll probably be right, and they'll be impressed! So now every bird is a red-tailed hawk. That's our story, and we're sticking to it! On our next trip to Animal Kingdom, don't be surprised if you are on safari and hear someone in the back of the truck pointing at the flamingos and saying "Look! A red-tailed hawk!" That will be us.

This is Isham. He's a red-tailed hawk. His tail feathers are a reddish brown rusty color, and his front is a light cream color with some brown specks. In general, the feathers form a kind of V formation on the front, but Isham's are more randomly placed all over his front. If I remember correctly, Isham ended up at their refuge when he was found with a severely damaged eye. They were able to save his life, but not the eye, and since hawks need their eyes to spot prey, he could not be released into the wild because he wouldn't be able to hunt and might starve. So he lives here and educates people about Raptors.
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Next we met Suli. Suli is a Turkey Vulture. I don't remember exactly how Suli ended up here...I thought maybe a damaged wing? Turkey vultures use the air currents to float rather than wasting energy by flapping their wings to stay in the air. They go from one current to another, which is why people often think they are circling possible prey. Actually, they are just floating on the currents to stay in the air. But with a damaged wing, he can't do that, so he can't be released into the wild.
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After the show, the boys were done, but E and I had a LOT more to explore. The entrance fee gives you 2 days to visit, and we were in Cody for a few, so E and I settled for finishing our tour of the Natural History museum while the boys sat and had a drink in the cateteria.

Unfortunately, I was so engaged in what we were seeing and doing that I stopped taking notes after the 17th, so I'm going purely by memory, and I don't remember what we did for the rest of the day. I remember the Raptor show was at like 3 in the afternoon, and I think we left the museum at a little before 5, but what we did between that and dinner, I don't remember. I did get ahold of my friend who lives in Cody and set up a lunch with her for the next day. And I know we went to dinner at the Irma, this time for the buffet. I think we just went back to the hotel for a little bit to rest before dinner, or maybe went in search of a grocery store? I know I did laundry at some point, because the hotel only had 1 washer and one dryer....it's really hard to get laundry done for a family of 4 on vacation with only one machine. You have to spend the whole day there switching loads out. I think I had actually gotten up early that morning to start while everyone else was sleeping in.

I had done my research months in advance of this trip, and the big attraction for food in town seemed to be the Irma. They had buffets for all 3 meals every day as well as an a la carte menu including fries, so we could hopefully be fed without going to multiple places, though Cody did have a McDonalds AND a Dairy Queen. The Dinner buffet at the Irma consisted of Prime Rib at the carving station, and then some ready made dishes, a salad bar, and a soup bar. What we didn't know the night before when we had eaten here was that the soup bar and salad bar are separate. We had gotten the salad bar with our meals to supplement, and I THINK my husband ate both soup and salad when we were supposed to choose. In our defence, I've never seen those be two separate charges and the server had mentioned both and hadn't said they were separate charges. Oops. But really, for the price they charge and the quality of the food, it really should all be included. The soup bar only had one type of soup on it, the salad bar was pretty sparse, and the whole buffet was a bit thin. I did try some of the mashed potatoes with my prime rib, but there really wasn't a whole lot on the buffet and the veggies were obviously from the freezer section of a grocery store, not fresh. They had a bread pudding as dessert with a whiskey sauce and that sauce could knock over a pretty large person....it was very heavy on the whiskey and totally overpowered the bread pudding. There were no other dessert choices that I can remember. Overal it was disappointing and I don't think we got our money's worth. I didn't even take any pictures. A didn't like the fries there, so we had to go to McDonalds afterwards to get him dinner, and there was no inside dining there, so you HAD to go through the drive thru and it took forever!! I don't know why, but we were in that line for probably 20 minutes and by the time we got up to the window, the food wasn't hot anymore. Total waste, because A won't eat it if it's not hot, so it got tossed and he ate poptarts in the room. I think this was the night E and I ended up making a pilgrimage to Walmart to buy A some socks because his had all gotten holes in them, and to get him some pringles, since his dinner had not been edible.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 20th

Oh, I forgot to post the picture of Jade from the day before. Jade is too big to actually be held like the other Raptors, so she doesn't take part in the show, but she has an enclosure just off to the side. I had to take the pictures through the netting, but I think they are ok. This is the one from my phone, because I had to use zoom and the camera ones are unfocused.

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So, I think we skipped breakfast this morning? We were going to do the lunch buffet at the Irma, and we knew it would be a lot of food, so I think we just snacked in the room for breakfast. Oh, right...donuts...E and I went all over the place looking for donuts with chocolate filling for A. Apparently these are not a "thing" anymore.....we couldn't find them ANYWHERE. Anyway, we got some donuts for breakfast and the boys stayed in the room while E and I went back to the Center of the West to catch more before meeting my friend Emily for lunch. We wanted to catch the morning Raptor show...A didn't want to come back to the museum, but he was really interested in the birds and wanted us to see if we could see other birds and what other information we would hear about them. He was pretty sure that the show was at 10am, and he was right. None of the rest of us had noticed the schedule. Leave it up to him to catch that kind of thing.

This morning we met Teasdale. He's a Great Horned Owl. Teasdale can only do morning shows because of the heat in the Summer.

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Isn't he gorgeous?? If you notice his legs, he has feathers all the way down to his talons....basically fur boots, all year long. In the Summer, the afternoons get too warm for a fur coat and boots, so he can only do the morning shows. Our show host was the girl who held Isham the day before. I don't remember her name, but she wasn't nearly as entertaining. She gave the information, but it wasn't in the humorous, engaging way that Brandon had done yesterday's show. I don't really remember much of what she told us other than that the little tufts of feathers that look like ears are called Plumicorns, and they are actually a bit uneven, and that's because an owl uses the combination of those 2 tufts directs the sound and they can better detect where their prey is hiding.

We also met Isham again. Here you can see the brown feathers on his front, and see his missing eye.
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It was kind of funny because there was another Dutch family seated right next to us. We were the first ones there so we could find a nice seat in the shade, near the front so I could get better pictures. Soon after, a family came in and sat down next to us and the mom started speaking Dutch to her kids. So we started up a conversation with them and they are opposite of us....they live in the US and the mom is Dutch and moved here to be with her American husband, who was from Cody. They were in Cody visiting their family, and soon the BIL came with his kids and there were toddlers and babies running all over the place. Dutch mom had brought some little matchbox cars for her little guy to play with, and her nephew came up wanting to play with the cars, so she pulled out another for him, which he quickly lost interest in, in favor of climbing the steps with his cousins. Then they brought in the birds, and he was trying so hard to get up there to pet the birds, which of course you can't, but he did NOT want to be pulled away. And the man holding Isham was trying to keep his distance from the toddler while still showing the bird to the rest of the audience.

After the show, we went to the Plains Indians Museum. We were not at ALL interested in the Firearms museum....the boys had been there yesterday, and said it was kind of fun...there was some sort of video game type thing where you could do a simulated target shooting game, but I just don't like guns. I'm the odd duck in my family. My dad had hunters who came to the ranch every year from all over the US, and he and my brother both went out every year, and my mom had shot an antelope and its head was mounted on our wall above our TV my whole life until mom died. It now resides in a gas station somewhere near Kaycee Wyoming. But I never wanted anything to do with firearms or really any kind of weapons. My dad got me a gun as a graduation present to take to college with me for protection. He no more left our house than I called on my brother to please get the thing out of my sight. He was happy to take it off my hands. And my daughter seems to take after me a bit. So we opted to skip that one, and while we wouldn't have minded seeing a bit of the Whitney Western Art Museum. it was low priority. We had to rush a bit to get through the Plains Indian Museum before lunch, so we spent our time there instead.

Back to the Irma for the lunch buffet. I was much more interested in visiting with Emily than the food at the buffet, if that tells you anything about how great the food was. There was I think a ham? at the carving station, but there was no one there to actually carve it. I think there was some fried chicken, and some sort of pasta, and maybe some kind of fish? That's how memorable it was. Not worth the money. But it was nice to catch up with Em, and I completely forgot to get a picture with her!! I was so sad when I realized. Em was in choir with me in college. Our voices are very similar, but she's an alto and I'm soprano, so we blend very well together, and neither of us have much vibrato, so we are ideally suited to Jazz music. We had SO much fun together in Jazz. In the Chorale and the chamber choir, and the opera theater, too, but Jazz is a much smaller group and that's where we were at our best. Neither of us have opera voices. She teaches music now, and one of her former students was our server that day. I wonder if her singing was as mediocre as her service...she did not get a very good tip from me. I was hoping that being a former student, she might go a bit above and beyond, but that turned out to be false hope. She wasn't BAD, just....not very present. We were quite neglected.

I think I went back to doing laundry after lunch, and then we went to Dairy Queen for a snack later. I have NO idea if we ate dinner or just snacked. We may not have been hungry, or there may not have been many options? We went to the Wild West Spectacular that night, and I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the show, but there are some good ones on the website. https://nl.codywildwestshow.com/

It was cute, and pretty well done for an amateur show. Most of the roles are played by locals, and there's some sort of dance school in Cody, so the focus is definitely more on the dance than on the vocals, but it was a fun show and worth the cost for a night of entertainment. They sold old fashioned sarsparilla in the intermission, so that was kind of cool. It's kind of the story of Buffalo Bill's show, with some creative embellishments. But it's got Annie Oakley, and there are some actual events and people...it's MOSTLY accurate.

And that's it for this day. We really took it easy!!
 

erstwo

Well-Known Member
I love all of the bird photos! When I first met my husband, he still did volunteer raptor rescues. So he would get calls to go pick up and injured birds and transport them to the raptor center. Lots of crazy stories of owls/ hawks/ loons in cardboard boxes in our cars.

That’s interesting that they can’t hold their bald Eagle. She must be huge. We have met Spirit at Auburn University a few times and she is held, but her handler is usually a pretty strong person. You can see at the end of this video.

 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I love all of the bird photos! When I first met my husband, he still did volunteer raptor rescues. So he would get calls to go pick up and injured birds and transport them to the raptor center. Lots of crazy stories of owls/ hawks/ loons in cardboard boxes in our cars.

That’s interesting that they can’t hold their bald Eagle. She must be huge. We have met Spirit at Auburn University a few times and she is held, but her handler is usually a pretty strong person. You can see at the end of this video.


It's not so much that they can't hold her, it's that they can't hold her for the duration of the show. It's like a half hour show and they hold the birds the whole time. They are never let loose to fly or anything. They are just held out and the handler has their arm extended with the bird perched there for the duration. A bald eagle would get AWFULLY heavy after half an hour. So they just keep her in the enclosure so people can see her, but they don't bring her out to the show area. I had thought it might be more like Disney's bird show where the birds fly to a person or to a perch, and other bird shows I've seen have done that, too, but this one didn't do that. I think maybe because they are birds that are in some way disabled....like the messed up wing that prevents them from flying normally. And they aren't TRAINED birds, so they can't really predict what the bird would do. They keep them tethered and they can't really do much more than turn around. One of them, I think Suli, turned around and was NOT going to face the audience. It was kind of comical, and he didn't turn around until halfway through the show. But that's about the extent of their range of motion. So holding out that big eagle the whole time just isn't an option. She was beautiful though!!! I love eagles. And I particularly love owls, so I was really happy to meet Teasdale. I think owls are so beautiful.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
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
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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.

IMG_1754.JPG

No idea what these are, but I took these with my phone because I needed to zoom in to see the details.
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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:IMG_1763.JPG

And zoomed in with the phone:

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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:
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There was a cool cocacola display:

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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.
 

HouCuseChickie

Well-Known Member
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:
IMG_1763.JPG


And zoomed in with the phone:

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I'm pretty sure these are some kind of Cliff Swallows. We saw a bunch of them at Soda Butte in Yellowstone, but I think that part of the park was closed for your visit.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So sorry I dropped the ball!! I really do want to finish this because there was so much we saw!

July 21st continued....
We went to the Dinosaur Museum. There's also a dig experience, but it was HOT and it's out in the Sun for hours and we weren't feeling that. So we went in and they have an Ice Cream shop right there after the entrance, so we got some delicious ice cream before heading in to see the museum.


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There was so much to see here....it was really great and we had an awesome time. I got a tshirt with a raptor on it and it says "Philosoraptor". I love that kind of thing.

After the museum, we went back to the hotel for some pool time before dinner.

I THINK we ate at a place called Los Cabos, but I might be mixing that up with Lander.

I got an enchilada, tostada and some rice and beans.
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My husband got a burrito with red chili I think?
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E got tortilla soup, which she had fallen in love with at the restaurant in Pinedale. She LOVES tortilla soup.
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I'm pretty sure I also got fried Ice cream here, but I don't seem to have a picture of it.
A won't eat Mexican food, and I think this might be where we tried to set the GPS to get us to a McDonalds and it listed 3 of them, but 2 of them were non-existent. One was in a residential area and there was literally NOTHING at that address, and the other took us to an empty building that did look as though it had at one time housed a fast food restaurant. Third time is the charm. We got him fed and then went to bed.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 22nd

This was mostly just a travel day. We were only going as far as Lander, and while I had considered visiting some places like Fort Washakie's grave, etc, I knew it wasn't really interesting to my husband or kids, and while E is content to go along with whatever, A gets bored more easily and then he starts complaining, which sets off my husband, and then everyone is miserable. So I decided we would visit the cultural center in the Wind River Reservation area if we could find it. I'm not sure that's what we found, but it was a giftshop with a bunch of Native American art, and a LOT of replica JUNK. The actual art is pretty cool, but there's a lot of stuff that is mass-produced and not local.

The only pictures I have from this day are from the drive.
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We stayed at a tiny little motel right next to a McDonalds and another tiny little motel that also had a decent restaurant for us to eat breakfast in the morning before we set off. That was it for this day....it was a pretty boring day. Sorry!! At least the scenery was pretty good, but I was driving most of the way, so I couldn't take pictures and Hubby isn't much of a picture taker on the road.
 

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