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| Our deluxe accommodations |
Cody, WY
First, a moment of gratitude for the perplexing fact that
none of the places we’ve camped have seemed to have any substantial mosquito
population. Is it the drought? Are these places just divinely blessed and
keeping quiet about it so we all don’t move here? Whatever the reason, we have been amazed and
delighted that night after night, as we cook, eat, and play outdoors, we have
suffered nary a bite. (This is really
saying something because Lanie is a total mosquito magnet. If there is any mosquito within a mile of
her, it will arrive and bite her repeatedly.)
We haven’t even pulled the bug spray out of the car.
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| That is our tipi, way down on the left |
In the case of our current tipi accommodations, this has
been a key factor. Our tipi walls don’t
in fact come all the way to the ground, so there is a good 6 inches of space at
floor level (right where we’re sleeping, in fact) that is wide open. (The top doesn’t close completely either. We're not sure what people are supposed to do when it rains, but are grateful we weren't forced to confront this question.) The sound of the rushing water in the creek also proved conducive to good sleeping.
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| Our backyard creek |
We started the day by wading in the creek behind our tipi,
which was rather cold and very fast-moving.
Zoe and Nadia managed to work their way upstream a fair distance, and of
course Lanie is always game to follow.
(I don’t know why we kid ourselves about the wading thing. They invariably end up wet and muddy from
head to toe. We ended up letting them go
back in later in the afternoon in their bathing suits.) Then, off to explore Cody.
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| At Old Trail Town, a set of genuine wild west buildings |
Cody is the town that was founded by Buffalo Bill, and they
don’t let you forget it. There are lots
of Wild West-themed attractions, restaurants, etc. We hit a couple of these and wandered through
a few stores, but in general kept it a pretty low-key day. The location of the town is beautiful, with
mountains rising up in every direction.
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| The stores have a different attitude out here |
Our big event of the day was the Cody Nite Rodeo, where we
got to see such traditional activities as bull riding, calf roping, barrel
racing, and trick riding. At one point
all the kids were called down to the arena (and it was unbelievable how many
kids poured out of the crowd). They then
released three calves with ribbons on their tails, and set the kids loose to
try to be the first to get a ribbon. I’ve
seldom seen such mayhem. The kids loved
it and all was well, until they sent them back to their seats and somehow Lanie
went off the field at the wrong exit.
There were so many kids that we hadn’t seen where she’d gone, and we had
all split up and were looking frantically for her when the announcer said there
there were two lost little girls in the souvenir shop. Lanie was rather traumatized by this whole
event and had a little trouble enjoying the rest of the rodeo, but she seemed
fully recovered the next morning.
***
From Bob:
Various parts of this trip have been hard on each of us, for
sure, but lately we should pity Nadia, who desperately yearns to ride – or at
least befriend – every horse she sees.
And there are a lot of horses in Wyoming. There are constant offers for trail rides
that she hopefully asks us to consider.
There is little hope in this stage of the trip; her riding will take
place at our Colorado ranch residency, in about a week or so.
Tonight
she got the next best thing to actually approaching a horse. The Cody Nite Rodeo is dripping with
cowboy-ness, yet seemingly much more authentic than anything else in this
rather touristy town. It runs, they say,
for 94 nights in a row over the spring and summer, and we got to see cowboys
and cowgirls riding and roping, racing around barrels, and hanging on for dear
life on bucking broncos and steers.
Tonight, nobody was able to hold on long enough to win the bull riding
portion of the rodeo.
As we
were here on the last night of the month, however, we were treated the awarding
of prize belt buckles to the most consistent competitors in the month of July
for each event. They were nice, big
belt buckles, too; we could see them from all the way up in the stands.
Another
thing that marked our night at the rodeo was that the chief rodeo clown’s
mother had died earlier today. Midway
through the evening, he knelt down in the middle of the ring with his main
sidekicks (two guys with red tassels coming off the back of their clothes –
they’re called bullfighters because one main part of their job is to distract
the bull so the guy who just fell off the bull has a chance of surviving) and
said a prayer. Then the main clown put
his hat back on and went on with his shenanigans. It’s pretty hardcore here in the World
Capital of Rodeo. It’s drenched with
country music, and it smells like a lot of animals pooping, but it’s also
almost worth the drive out here just on its own.
And it
was enough to satisfy Nadia’s horse cravings – for a while.
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| A rare moment of sisterly accord |
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