Overnight in Cody

It’s been a while since I’ve been camping  —  pitch the tent and sleep on the ground camping. Last night I woke from a bizarre dream, startled and totally disoriented. I got out of the tent and looked up at the stars, listened to the river, and realized, oh, okay. Cody, Wyoming, that’s where we are.

I had super low expectations for the campground, but we’re down by a bend in the river away from the main road. Up above there are huge RVs towing trailers that hold huge motorcycles, Gold Wings and Harleys. There’s a gigantic rig that tows a Hummer as the “run to town” vehicle. But down here, it’s pretty quiet, there are no generators and our neighbors are all quiet and friendly, all good campers.

Yesterday we drove through Yellowstone, slow, stopping often to take pictures and gawp at the scenery. I drove during the wildlife spotting portion of the trip, which meant that I looked back in the rearview mirror at the long line of traffic while Kelly and Peter shot photos out the window. We strolled the boardwalk at the paint pots, joined the masses at Old Faithful, and then took the winding road around Yellowstone Lake.

The landscape changed again from the green meadows and tall pines of the park to sagebrush and something yellow and sweet, I rolled down the window to fill the car with the scent of the desert flowers. We rolled through a spaghetti western landscape, high bluffs and plateaus, sandstone sculpture, table top mountains here and there.
We were too late for the Buffalo Bill History Center and too early for the blues festival. We pitched our tent during the Cody gun fight and while we heard the fire, we weren’t sure if it was that or thunder. It rained a little, enough to make us pull out the tent fly, not enough to send us “indoors”. Today it’s cloudy and gray, but it’s about 70 degrees. The forecast calls for thunderstorms, but it’s all so changeable and really, it doesn’t matter what the weather does, it’s all perfect.

There’s more on the TBEX Roadtrip Blog, here.