In the morning we were more than ready to say “hasta la vista baby” as we terminated our stay at the Red Lodge RV Park. As we drove off across the Wyoming border “little miss know-it-all” (our GPS) once again decided we should take a different route to Powell, Wyoming. After some course correction, our first stop was the restaurant where Peter worked as a cook for both years he was in Junior College . It was one of the nicest restaurants in town 40 years ago but today it was the ultimate “greasy spoon”. The owner let Peter walk around in the kitchen which was a disaster. We had already ordered lunch and Peter tried to talk to the cook and other kitchen help while they cooked our lunch. They could not understand what he was talking about and he wished he hadn’t seen them cooking our lunch. JY explained the experience to, Steve, one of our gourmand friends. In true gourmand spirit he encouraged her to embrace the experience and suggested that the salt and pepper were probably top notch. In response Peter said that the antacids that came with the meal were excellent.
After the disappointing lunch we went to the junior college in Powell were Peter attended classes about 40 years ago as he wanted to see how it had grown. We walked around campus for a little while. The student union building was open so we went in. It was two weeks before classes started and the place was deserted. Peter met the head of campus security and had a nice long chat about how much things have changed over the years. We were headed to from Powell to Cody so unplugged the GPS and put her in time out in the compartment in the consul. We were now dependent on an atlas and printouts from google maps. Several hours later we made it to Cody.
We pulled into the RV Park where we had reserved a site. The office gave Peter a map and directions to our site. On the way to our site Peter turned a corner too sharp and caught the folded up stairs into the trailer on a huge boulder and bent them to the point where they would not open. The trailer moved the boulder about 15 feet. When we got to our assigned site it was too short to accommodate our truck and trailer so he went to the front office and requested a longer site which they gave us and Peter confessed to hitting and moving the boulder.
Not having stairs that unfold was not going to work for JY. Peter pulled up a picnic table to the trailer door so JY could step up on the seat of the picnic table then onto the top of the table and walk into the trailer. Problem temporarily solved.
Feeling badly about the hitting the boulder and bending the steps into the trailer JY said let’s go get some ice cream to cheer Peter up. We went to Dairy Queen and met 3 young adults who were working at a summer camp for kids about 30 miles from Cody. We talked with them for about an hour. It was a real treat spending time with these young adults. We all had a good time.
The next morning Peter called a mobile RV repair shop that the front office recommended. However when Peter called the shop they had a was less than zero sense of urgency. About an hour later the owner of the RV Park stopped by to ask if Peter was the one who moved the boulder. He said yes and told him he would pay to put it back. The owner said don’t worry about it you’re not the first one to hit it. The owner looked at the stairs to the trailer and went to work on them and finally got them to where we could unfold and fold them back up. They are still a little bent but they are usable. Problem solved until we get back to Phoenix.
Now that we weren’t stuck in the trailer, we decided to spend the rest of the day at the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum. It located in the middle of downtown Cody and is a combination of 5 large museums. There is a gun museum with one of the largest collections of firearms in the North America. There were two large museums; one about the life and history of the plains Indians and the second about the life and history of the cowboys. The fourth museum was focused on natural history with an unbelievable collection of mounted animals in dioramas of their habitat in different seasons, very impressive.
The final museum was an art gallery of historic paintings depicting life in the west. Many pictures depicted both realistic and unrealistic life in the west. No surprise there was also a large gift shop.
After the museum tour we went for dinner at the Irma Hotel where they had a prime rib buffet. The chef carving the prime rib put the largest slice of prime rib on Peter’s plate that he’d ever seen. The dinner was good but did not come close to edging out Hillstone which is our favorite prime rib restaurant in Phoenix.
Back at the RV Park we hitched up the trailer and prepared to head out first thing in the morning. We woke up early and headed to Casper, Wyoming which was our interim overnight stop on our journey to Estes Park, Colorado, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. We pulled into our site at the RV Park in Casper and did not unhitch the truck and trailer. After a good night’s sleep we headed out, stopping in Douglas Wyoming for breakfast.
North By Northwest 