Cody and Surrounding Area

Well, it has taken me until Friday, June 19th to do this update and it won’t even get posted until tomorrow because there is absolutely no cell service in the middle of the canyon where we are staying. The drive from Casper to Cody was very uneventful- unless you consider the fact that the manual GPS took us 45 miles out of the way – instead of turning on the scenic WY 120 out of Shoshone- we ended up taking US 14/16/20 up to Greybull and then OVER to Cody – you know, the sides of the triangle instead of the hypotenuse. . Now I ask you – if you knew that you were coming out of Cody on US 14/16/20 towards Yellowstone as your ultimate goal, wouldn’t you think that the most direct route to Cody would be on 14/16/20? Noooo – the cut off to Cody is WY 120 – and of course that manual GPS missed it. We got to see some of the rest of Wyoming and that was good – but the driver was a little put out with the GPS unit, to say the least.

We are camping (yes I am still going to call it that, even with the kitchen sink) at the Shoshone National Forest Wapiti Campground and are actually camped along the Shoshone River. Although we can’t see it from our campsite as the underbrush has grown up and the water is high, making getting near the banks tough, we can hear it well. This is a rushing water river- not a stream. Think of what the ocean sounds like when you camp directly next to it at night - but the sound of the river is not rhythmic, it is constant. The campground is west of Cody, WY about 30 miles and east of Yellowstone about 22 miles. We are in black & grizzly bear country, and every site has a bear box that you are expected to use. No food, grills (supposedly), pet food, etc. can be left out over night – they must be locked in the bear box or in your car/camper, etc. We haven’t seen a bear yet (only a young moose) but that is probably because they make you use these items. Bears don’t get much chance as far as I can tell – I think they will relocate them once and then if they have a second incident they kill them. It is our responsibility to be conscientious campers since we are the ones encroaching on their territory- they are only responding to what comes natural for them – searching for food.

Tuesday was just a hang around the camp site, visit the only store for miles, The Red Barn at Wapiti and buy ice cream. Have you noticed a pattern yet, we seem to find places to buy ice cream. I think this is my favorite dessert. Anyway, Wednesday was necessaries day, you know, laundry, shopping, etc. They have a Sierra Trading Post Outlet here so we had to take that in as well. Additionally, there are a few quilt stores that Bruce volunteered to let me browse, but I am saving them until Saturday I think. Thursday was our first real ride – into the East Gate of Yellowstone to the Lake area so you can see that there has not been much to add to the blog anyway.


The drive into Yellowstone goes over Sylvan Pass at about 8500 ft and then drops into the park along Lake Yellowstone. There are plenty of reminders of the fires they have experienced in the last years, including one as late as 2008. What is worse though is the damage that is apparent from the Mountain Pine Beetle. Talk about deforestation on a grand scale. I am sure Mother Nature takes this all in stride and will recover, but not in our lifetime. We saw some geothermal activity along the way as well as many waterfalls over the road from Spring melt. Again, we didn’t see any bears, although I have been looking very hard. They say the Eastern entrance in the late Spring and early Summer is the most likely place to see them, but we haven’t been lucky yet. We stopped at all the overlooks going in and concluded our time in Yellowstone that day at the Lake Hotel for lunch. This hotel is the Grand Old Lady of the park and was designed to let those patrons who could afford it reside in as much comfort as Yellowstone could offer in the early 1900s. It is still considered the best accommodations in the park as well as having the best food. Lunch was OK, but I wouldn’t consider it world class. We inspected the campground at Fishing Bridge where we were supposed to stay beginning Monday next week, and we both agreed it left us wanting so much more, so we canceled. That means we are on our own for 9 days with no real schedule – whatever will we do, OH MY!. I still want to go to Crater of the Moons National Monument and also to ARCO, ID to see the first breeder reactor, EBR-1, so we aren’t completely off our original road map. We just won’t be staying in Yellowstone for any time, and will only do a few short visits, especially since this weekend will be a free weekend and I can assure you the crowds are already appearing. I think we would be much happier here in the fall or early spring, even if there is snow in the area. We are finding more and more how much we do not enjoy crowds, especially when driving and stopping. Not a fun event as far as I am concerned and there are always people who want to speed by, rush everything, etc. No, hundreds of families with children and their respective vehicles, including motorcycles and bikes, on a free weekend in Yellowstone are not my cup of tea. Anyway, we have enjoyed all our time so far, and we will see what Monday brings with a trip back through on our way to the other side. We will pass the Geyser Basin and if it is early enough and there are no crowds, we may get a chance to stop – who knows. The scenery outside Yellowstone is spectacular enough for us, so we are contenting ourselves with it.


Friday we did the ultimate scenic highway drives. We began in Cody, took WY 120 west and then turned left on the Chief Joseph Highway, WY 296. It takes you another way to the Northeastern Entrance to Yellowstone. It was a beautiful drive and we enjoyed it quite a bit. This is the land where Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians led the cavalry on a merry chase. We stopped on Dead Indian Pass at the top for a wonderful view of the whole surrounding area. I documented it with many pictures that are now in the album (or will be soon if I don’t have enough time to upload Saturday). It ends at US 212 east of Cooke City which is just NE of Yellowstone. US 212 include east from that point to Red lodge, MT is the renowned Beartooth Highway. It is the highest elevation highway in the Northern Rockies. We did the Beartooth Scenic Highway from East to West when we left Billings, MT for Yellowstone on our 30 day trip with Jeremy in 1987 so decided to try it west to east this time. The west side of the highway is in Wyoming and is still under quite a bit of snow. Once you pass over into Montana on the east side, although there is still some snow, it is evident they have not gotten quite the same moisture that the west has been experiencing. We turned east at Red Lodge, MT on Montana 308 to Bearcreek and past the remnants of Smith Mine #3 of the Montana Coal and Iron Company. This is the site of the worst mining disaster in Montana history where on February 27, 1943 74 of the 77 men working the mine were killed when the mine blew up. The old buildings are still there as the memorial and the mine was never reopened. At Belfry we turned south for cody and an hour later completed what was a wonderful drive through the Wyoming & Montana countryside.

Today we are running errands and I found a wonderful quilt shop where I just had to buy some Buffalo Bill Cody material for my travel quilt. We are on our way back to the campground- so I am publishing this without the requisite pictures- they will be added later.

Onward Towards Yellowstone

It is Monday, June 15th and we have been on the road 4 weeks now. We are really enjoying this trip- even when I can't breathe, or I get some stomach thing, etc. Thought i would start this with the one real picture i got of Pike's Peak - from The Beast as we drove past on our way to Loveland/Ft. Collins. look at all that snow still there- good reason we did not take the cog railway up this time- but definitely next time - hopefully this fall.

We are in Wyoming as I type this- on our way to Wapiti Campground just east of Yellowstone and West of Cody, WY. This will be an all day trip (over 500 miles, about half on secondary roads) ending in a cell phone/internet less area I am sure- so I will do my updates now. The Loveland/Ft. Collins area is a great place and we will have to go back to do all the things available. The weather has been pretty funny there this spring, with rain and wind storms every afternoon, so we didn't get to see and do as much as we wanted. Additionally, I was just not up to the trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and the drive at 11,000 feet. My breathing has been bad, I feel as though there is a weight sitting in the middle of my chest all the time and it does not make having fun- fun. This weight has got to go!! Anyway .....

We did drive west of Ft. Collins on Co. 12 through Poudre (pronounced in the west as cash luh pew-der) Canyon along the Cache la Poudre river- Colorado's only designated wild and scenic river. We were early in the morning so did not encounter all the late to rise Coloradoans (yes, they all seem to get up after 8 and take awhile to get doing things, might have something to do with the late sun in their valleys and the early morning cold) so had the road to ourselves for awhile. Once it got more towards 11 the traffic picked up so we became the sight seeing slow pokes. They were all on their way to raft, kayak, picnic, etc. on the river. Many of the pictures in my album in the canyon are just that- remembrances of the drive. It is beautiful and the river was high, moving fast, and very cold (per Bruce who walked down the steps and sampled it with his foot). There were all sorts of people rafting- and quite a few companies offering to shuttle, provide the raft, pick up, etc. Kayaks are prolific also, with most people wearing some type of dry suits to stay warm. Trout fishing is also big- with several of the areas only for catch & release and artificial lures and flies are all that can be used.

We stayed at Boyd Lake State Park in Loveland, Co This lake is used by lots of boats (motor & sail) as well as jet skis, wind surfers and of course swimmers. The campground is the normal type where water activities are the center - more campsites to accommodate as many people as possible, but still done in a park setting. The state is very involved in preventing zebra mussels from infiltrating the fresh water bodies- so all of the water craft go through mandatory inspections before they go into the water. That does cause quite a back-up during heavy use times like weekends and all during the summer, but everyone seems to take it in stride and it is very necessary. You should do some research on the zebra mussel- they are very prolific, cover everything, clog up intakes for the water ways, and cover anything that sits still, etc. They are not natural to the US, they came into the Great Lakes on freighters and just stayed. They are not in Florida yet, probably because so many of our boating areas have salt water intrusion and they are fresh water creatures- but they need to be contained where possible. Bruce's idea is that this is a plan, that since the US hasn;t fallen to communism or major terrorist activities, instead the countries that really hate us are just introducing these innocuous things into our environment and letting them run amuck, killing indigenous species, and costing us time and mucho money to try to control (which we probably can't). But you know us- we are big into those conspiracy theories. I got several pictures of the boaters waiting in line to get their boats OUT of the water later yesterday afternoon as a storm approached, and that is probably how it is on any given weekend.

We were fortunate that the camp site one I picked out and reserved via the web was next to an unused site so we had more room. I have run into people who have asked why I reserved sites (they supposedly didn't want to be on any type of schedule) - well I can tell you that every campground we have stayed at since summer started has been full on the weekends - and if the sites were reservation sites, people camped on them had to move on if someone had reserved them for that time. The reservation systems work both ways- to help and hamper you. I would also have preferred to ramble this area, but in a 36 ft motorhome, you can't always find a campground at the last minute that will accommodate us. In the west many of the parks are older and were built for smaller trailer campers, pop-ups (they are the #1 type of non-tent camping out here I think), tents, etc. - let's face it this is an outdoors type of world, not a stay in your moving home world. The bigger RVs were never contemplated. If we ever move out this direction we will add a smaller class C, or a nice slide-in for the truck to our assets so we can stop about anywhere (Right now that is a big IF).

I will close with the campground we all see- Walmart. Seems even where the parks abound there are those campers who will park at Walmart. I always find it kinda funny that people will pay $100,000+ for these homes on wheels and then have to save money by camping in the Walmart parking lot. When you are traveling for one night- fine- you come in, park, eat, go to bed and leave the next morning- but that is not the case with many - I will never understand.

We just left Casper, WY on the trail to yellowstone so I will probably lose connectivity soon but who knows. The next few posts may be farther between as we enter the wilds of west Wyoming and Yellowstone. Don't think the Verizon coverage map shows much of that area having connectivity. Enjoy.