Tue, 7/1/08

Yellowstone NP: WY: An iffy morning this morning so we decided to drive into Cody and get on the computer and do some grocery shopping. It’s 80 miles to Cody from here and will probably take two hours to get there. The speed limit in the park is 45 MPH and through the Shoshone National Forest it’s 50. A beautiful drive though. It was in the 50s when we left and in the 80s in Cody. We found a wi-fi spot outside a Comfort Inn and were able to get on from their parking lot. We had lunch at the Silver Dollar in Cody and then drove out west of town to the original town site of Cody which had a bunch of old buildings on it that we thought might be interesting. Turns out all these buildings are authentic from different parts of Wyoming which were disassembled and reassembled at this site. One was a saloon where the Hole in the Wall Gang used to hang out. Also a couple of cabins where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used to hide out. There was an old school cabin called “The Coffin School” (1884). It was called that because the guy who originally owned the cabin died there of gangrene after he cut himself in the leg while hewing logs. Depressing name though. There were 26 buildings in all, plus a lot of different wagons from the 1800s. The neatest thing though is the little cemetery on this site. There are six graves there—all exhumed from other locations and reburied here. One of the graves was of Jeremiah “Liver Eating” Johnson. He died in California at the age of 76 and was moved to this site in 1974. Robert Redford was a pall bearer at this service. Of course he played him in the movie. This guy did all kinds of things after his “mountain man” days. He was born in New Jersey in 1824, had been a trapper, hunter, army scout, marshal, and Civil War veteran. Over 2000 people showed up for his reburial—the largest burial service in the history of Wyoming. Probably because Robert Redford was there. And in some of the buildings was displayed all kinds of buffalo coats, Indian clothing, saddles, tack—all kinds of artifacts from the period. Another cabin there was the home of Curly—one of Custer’s Crow Indian scouts. The guy that started this was an archaeologist for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody. He realized that old historical buildings and associated material were rapidly disappearing from the landscape. So in 1967 work began to gather the historic buildings and relics to be displayed at this site on the west side of Cody, which was the area Buffalo Bill and his associates had chosen for the first town site of Cody in 1895. A great place. After we left the “Old Trail Town” we went to Wal Mart to do our grocery shopping—what a let down. Then drove back and hit a thunder storm at Sylvan Pass. Temperature dropped 30 degrees.