Buffalo Bill and Cody Too

Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018

After our lovely soak in the humungous hot springs pool at Fountain of Youth RV Park, we slept quite well! The air cooled down quite a bit overnight, and we were very comfortable in the morning. I took a few photos of the pool in the daylight, something I’d forgotten to do back in 2007 when we were here last. (I added them to yesterday's blog.) Then I took my computer and phone to a picnic table near the park office, so I could get a strong signal on the wifi. That allowed me to upload that last blog, although the phone reception was still quite poor and I couldn’t get my pool photos to download. I finally gave up after getting the blog online.

By that time, Joe had dumped the tanks and filled the fresh water tank up, and was ready to go. So we headed north again, toward Cody, Wyoming. Cody is all about Buffalo Bill, who founded the town and who spent a lot of time in the area. When we got to town, we were headed toward the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a AAA “gem” attraction. Although we’ve been to Yellowstone several times over the decades, we’ve never been through Cody. As we drove down the very busy main street, full of fun-looking shops geared toward tourists, my eye was caught by Zapata’s Mexican Restaurant. Immediately, I knew that was what I wanted for lunch!

Nature display in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West

A few blocks further and we were at both the museum, and the visitor’s center. So we stopped at the latter first. I picked up a LOT of very useful information, guidebooks, and maps, and asked the nice man who sold me the museum tickets where we could park the RV so we could eat at the restaurant. As luck would have it, the RV lot was exactly behind Zapata’s! So I went back to Joe and Cassie (who were sitting on the shady lawn outside the visitor’s center watching a deer) and we drove two blocks back to the restaurant, where we had a lovely lunch.

Wild West Show Posters

After that, we headed to the museum. It is a very large place, and the tickets were actually good for two days, because it’s impossible to see everything in one day. Especially if you start at 2pm, like we did! We set Cassie up in the parking lot with the generator going and the AC on to make sure she was cool enough (it was HOTTT in Cody!) and went inside. I’d already done some “triage” to prepare for our visit, knowing that 1) it was a lot to see and 2) we get tired after a few hours! There are 5 major sections of the museum: 1) the Buffalo Bill collection, which tells all about his life and experiences, as well as his place in the “taming” of the West; 2) a natural history section focusing on the Yellowstone river basin, all the plants and animals, etc; 3) a huge collection of firearms; 4) a gallery of Western art; and 5) the story of the Plains Indians. There are also other things to see, including Buffalo Bill’s childhood home, a photography gallery, and other stuff I can’t even remember. I decided that we could skip the firearms and the art gallery, and focus on the other three big exhibits.

Video of Wild West Show parade in NYC

We walked in the door right by the natural history section, so that is where we started. It was interesting, although it didn’t knock my socks off. I especially liked the skeletons of sabertooth cats from the region, and the buttons we could push to hear the sounds that various birds and animals make. It was well done, but I guess I wasn’t really in the mood for it.

Then we went to the Buffalo Bill section, which is what I was most excited to see. Buffalo Bill started out in the Union army during the civil war (both his father and he were anti-slavery.) After that he became a guide to the west, which he loved. He married and had 4 children, and eventually moved the whole family out west. He started becoming well known through stage shows entertaining people with skits etc. to dramatize the experience of the settlers, their conflicts with the Indians, etc., and he played himself in these shows. That led to his creation of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The exhibits for that were fantastic, with costumes worn by the performers, sections on special stars like Annie Oakley, and art, including posters from the show. Durinig the 30 years the show was on the road, they traveled all over the world. But several times, they spent a whole season in one place, including two years spent in Brooklyn, NY! There was a large model showing the set-up for all the show personnel and animals. My favorite thing was a screening of actual movie reels taken in 1910 of the show when it was in New York.

Native American toys, including miniature teepee (flat)

Buffalo Bill was really an interesting person for his time. He believed women were equal to men in every way (including being in favor of the women’s vote), and he had people of every sort of background working in his Wild West Show, including Asians, former slaves, people from other countries (who carried their country’s flag in the show’s parade and performed their own ethnic dances, etc.), and of course, Indians. During one of the seasons in Brooklyn, there was an Indian wedding, and the celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid by a group of performers from Morocco. Cody also was very involved in ideas which he felt would move the West into the future--for example, he was instrumental in getting a dam built just outside Cody on the Shoshone River, which he knew would help produce power to modernize the surrounding area (he was right.)

Painted Hide showing a buffalo hunt

By the time we finished that section, we were both quite tired, but I didn’t want to leave without seeing the Plains Indians exhibits, since I was not at all convinced we’d come back for a second day. So we literally dragged ourselves through that section. It really was a great exhibit, with examples of different Native American lodges (a teepee, and a mud lodge), and spectacular examples of artifacts of every kind-- clothing, tools, toys, weapons, etc. There was also a section of modern art by Native Americans celebrating their culture. The hardest part was the section on “encounters” of the People (which is how they refer to themselves): all the bad things such as disease, missionaries, boys’ schools (where they--i.e. our government-- took children away from their families to indoctrinate them into “white” culture), and of course war (ultimately massacre), and displacement. Very hard to finish up with exhibits like that, at the end of the day.

Buffalo Bill Dam and Lake

Finally at 5:30, we’d just exhausted ourselves. We went back to the RV, and literally lay in bed for more than 30 minutes before we had the energy to go. Finally, we started up Routes 12/16/20 from Cody to the East Entrance to Yellowstone National Park. I had made a reservation at a National Forest campground just 3 miles outside YNP for the night. I hadn’t quite realized, however, that it would take us an hour to get there!

The drive, however, was not difficult, because it was so GORGEOUS. The first thing we did was go through 3 tunnels, which opened up on Buffalo Bill’s dam. We stopped to look at the lake, and were disappointed that because it was Saturday, the Visitor’s Center closed at 5pm. It sounds like they have a lot of really interesting exhibits there, and we like dams (related to locks, right?) As we continued up the road, we drove along the Shoshone River, and the rocks were fabulous. We stopped to take photos of one configuration because it was so unique, only to find from the roadside display that we were not the first to think so! It was called “The Holy City”, for its supposed resemblance to Jerusalem.

Shoshone River between Cody and Yellowstone

Whatever, it was definitely fascinating. And the river was beautiful. And ultimately, we got to our campground, to find it positioned right next to the river. We leveled the RV up, made a simple dinner of leftovers, and went to sleep without firm plans for the next day. Should we go back to Cody and see the dam and be tourists? Should we drive into the park? Being an hour drive from Cody and also an hour drive from the main attractions of YNP made it all seem a difficult choice. So we decided to sleep on it.

"The Holy City"