Trip Report Cody,Wy

Chris and I drove out to Montana Monday,  May 11, 19 and 98.   I returned by air last Sunday, May 17.   We had a good time although we did a lot of driving.

Tuesday,  we visited Custer Battle Field (Custer’s Last Stand) and several other Indian battle sights in northern Wyoming and southern Montana.  We reached Gardner,  Montana on Tuesday afternoon.

Gardner is on the north border of Yellowstone part.  In fact,   you can set in a restaurant on main street and watch the elk walking around the mountainside in Yellowstone only a few meters away.  Gardner has about 3,000 people. 

The hunting guide school is about 15 miles west of Gardner.   We drove out to the ranch where Chris would be staying.  The crooked gravel road went through a mountain pass with a roaring stream about two yards wide.  Beautiful country!  Mountaintops were covered with snow.  The air was crisp - about 60 degrees with very low humidity.   We reached the ranch in a small basin ringed with snow topped mountains.   The fragrance of the pine trees and the sagebrush was all you could smell.  They were not ready for us (or Chris) at the school as it didn’t start until the next Monday.   We returned to Gardner and found a motel room and a restaurant.

Wednesday,  we drove through Yellowstone park.   It started to rain and soon it was snowing in the higher elevations.   It was most pleasant.  Normally,  the park is full of tourist but this time of year is about three weeks before the start of the tourist season.  And it was the middle of the week and it was snowing.   We reached Cody,  Wyoming that afternoon and got a room and found a restaurant to eat a late lunch.  We planned to tour the Wild (Buffalo) Bill Cody museum the next day. 

About 7:00 p.m.,  we decided it would be nice to find a café and get a piece of pie and ice cream.   I had seen an advertisement for an old hotel in Cody (Cody has probably 10,000 people).  The hotel had been built by Wild Bill Cody in 1909 and was still in operation.  It had a restaurant so I read the information to Chris and suggested we go there for our pie.  

Chris was driving as we drove through the town.  I pointed out the hotel with restaurant but Chris drove on past it.  O.K.  I can’t always figure him out - must be some reason he didn’t want to stop there.   We drove out of town to the east without finding another restaurant.  Chris turned around and drove back into town - past the hotel I pointed out again.  Still he didn’t stop but turned down another highway and went out of town to the north until again we were out into the desert.   He turned around again and went back into town and headed west towards Yellowstone Park.   We drove 18 miles to a roadside restaurant/bar/motel along the highway.   Here he stopped and we got our pie and ice-cream.

Next to the restaurant was a saddle maker’s shop.  Chris wanted to stop in.  Well,  it was past 8:00 p.m. by now but the saddle maker was still there working.  Chris and this old cowboy (over 50 - I would say) hit it off right away.  He had part of one finger missing from getting it stuck under the rope wrapped around the saddle horn when the cow pulled the rope tight.   His lower jaw was wired shut from an accident he had just had at the rodeo - a bull stepped on his face.  He also had a soft cast or brace on his right leg where a horse had stepped on him.

He wore an old cowboy hat,  tight blue jeans,  cowboy shirt and big silver belt buckle. He had worked as a cowboy on many of the large ranches in the area and told Chris story after story and filled him with advice.   He was the genuine article. 

We visited for a good hour even though it was late in the evening and the old cowboy had his mouth wired shut. Chris asked him to make a holster for his .44 magnum Ruger pistol.  (Chris is left-handed and it is harder to find a good left side holster.)  He said to leave the Ruger and to return the next afternoon and he would have it done.

Thursday morning Chris was looking at some information about Cody that I had picked up the day before and found a hotel that was built in 1909 by Wild Bill Cody and it had a restaurant.  “Why didn’t we go there last night for the pie and ice-cream?” He asked.  Ahaaaa!  I told him I had suggested it the night before and I had pointed it out three times we passed it.  He argued that I hadn’t.   Anyway,   we went there and had breakfast and it was great.  The hotel was built for $80,000 and then they had a bar specially built in Europe and shipped over to Cody.  The bar cost $100,000.   It was something to see.

We then went to the Cody museum - actually four museums:  Museum of the Plains Indians,   Museum of Western Art (With lots of Russell and Remington painting and sculptures as well as other famous western artist.),  the Cody gun museum with thousands of guns - mostly of the western pioneer era. ,  The Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show museum,  and an Indian Culture Exhibit (more contemporary native Indian culture).  Each museum is huge and it takes about six hours just to walk through them all.

After the museum tour,  we returned to the saddle maker to get Chris’s holster.  He was not done with it but was pleased that we stay and visit with him while he worked.  This took another two hours.  Again,  he filled Chris with stories and advice.   I later told Chris it was interesting but take note of all the injuries this old Cowboy had suffered and that he didn’t look like he had two nickels to rub together.  

One of the stories he told was when he was camp cook on one ranch.  The guys were getting tired of the limited menu so the next time he sent for provisions,  he asked for some yeast so he could make bread instead of biscuits.  He thought he remembered how but after punchin' the bread dough back down the second time,  he just placed them in his Dutch oven to bake. 

They baked all right. He said they came out like bricks - having not raised as he had expected.  He worked at trying to cut through the crust thinking maybe the inside would still be edible but couldn't even cut through.  He ended up pitching the loafs over into a gulch behind the camp.  After a bit,  he heard a commotion in the gulch.  He slipped up to the edge to see a crow on it's back with one of the loafs of bread in it's caws trying to peck something off from it. 

The story may not have been that funny but to see this old cowboy telling it with tiers in his eyes laughing so hard with his jaw wired shut, face bruised and swollen,  It was quite the scene.

We returned to Gardner through Yellowstone Park by a different way than we had came - thus seeing other parts of the park.  It was snowing hard and the road was covered at the higher elevations.

The next day (Friday) we again entered Yellowstone Park and toured the west side.  That day was sunnier and we saw more tourists than the other two days but still not crowded.  In all,  we saw many elk,  moose,  buffalo,  deer and antelope.   Other people had seen bear but we didn’t.  

We exited the park on the west side made a large loop into south-west Montana and made several stops along the way and returned to Gardner for the evening.   It was our plan to use the week to tour the area around Gardner.

Instead of taking the highway back into Gardner,   we noted a gravel road on the map that was on the west side of the Yellowstone River.  It was called the Gardner Back Road and was mostly gravel where it wasn’t dirt - about twenty miles of it.  It was apparently the original road into Gardner.  

At one place the road was built high on the mountainside with a straight drop off one side down to the Yellowstone River.  Here I spotted an eagle setting in the top of a tree at the river’s edge.  We stopped and took some pictures of it.   How often can you expect to be above and eagle setting in the top of a tree?

Saturday morning we drove back out to the ranch to see if we could spend the day there.  Well,  they still was not ready for us but we unloaded some more of Chris’s stuff and put it in his to-be room.  We then returned to some National Forest land above Yellowstone.  We walked up the side of one of the mountains and Chris took some pictures.  The elevation was around 8,000 feet and it made climbing difficult for me. 

We then drove toward Bozeman,  Montana to spend the night and to get me to the airport by 6:00 a.m. to fly home.

He got me to the airport on time.  He didn’t want to stay with me until the plane took off because they only allowed 30 minutes of free parking - otherwise he may have to pay $.50.  The plane stopped in Salt Lake City and I changed to another going to Kansas City.   Mary was there to get me and drive another three hours back home.   No problems.

Chris called later that evening to see if I got home O.K.  He came back to the ranch to find the guide school instructor had driven to Bozeman to get another student at the airport.  No one else was there.  Then the cook/housekeeper returned and packed up her stuff and told Chris to tell the management she was quitting and she left!  Here he was,  first night at the place and everyone was gone.

He called again on Wednesday night to tell of his first two days at the school.   The trainer had reached Gardner about midnight Sunday night with the other student (was to be six students total but the other four didn’t come for reasons unknown.) when his truck broke.  He had to walk 15 miles to the ranch to get another truck to tow his truck to the ranch - not arriving until 3:00 a.m.   Without a cook,  the instructor (the only other person there) is doing the cooking and housekeeping (if any?).   The owners of the ranch and guide school is not expected until next week.

The first day they practiced catching horses and putting saddles and bridles on them.  The second day they had to catch a horse and trim it’s feet and put on new shoes.   This 30 minute job took Chris all day - wearing both he and the horse out.