Woke Up Sunday Mornin' With No Way To Hold My Head That Didn't Hurt..

We decided to take the east exit out of Yellowstone National Park to head to the wild west town of Cody, WY. William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the famous wild west show organizer, founded this town in 1895 in which his spirit is still very much alive. Cody is evidently world famous for its rodeos which are held every single night from early June through the end of August. When I asked our camp host at the Ponderosa Campground and RV park how this town could have enough cowpeople to host a rodeo every night she informed me that, "Cody rodeo isn't the biggest in the world, but it pays the most, so cowboys come from all around to compete." She then went on to tell us that at 6:00 pm we could "eat all we could eat" while watching a live gunfight at the Irma Hotel. The Irma was created by Buffalo Bill and named after his daughter (thanks Wikipedia- we couldn't afford both the rodeo AND entrance to the Buffalo Bill museum). We chose rodeo as they had beer and popcorn, live animals and the possibility of injuries. 

We ran some errands that afternoon and explored downtown Cody before showering and changing into our western wear. I like to dress appropriately for all events I attend but was worried that like in Yellowstone, the weather would be significantly cooler in the evenings, so I opted for skinny jeans and my boots instead of a dress. We decided to ride our bikes the 2 miles to the Cody Rodeo and Stampede arena so that we could burn off the Bud and/or Coors Light calories we were bound to imbibe. Whilst riding we were heckled by some locals, something to the extent of, "Buy a 4-wheel drive!!!" or something like that I'm not sure as they were driving by quite fast. It was clear that the residents of Cody had never seen a bicycle before. I guess we should've ridden horses but we weren't sure how to acquire them on such short notice. 

We arrived to the stinky rodeo arena and paid our $18.00 each. When we handed our tickets over to the gentleman at the gates he said, "Where y'all from?" Clearly my urban tribal print top, skinny jeans and boots were not fooling anyone. When we arrived, the 12 and under kids were out riding baby cows, followed by the barrel racer cowgirls and then more kiddos on horses. It was, perhaps, the cutest thing we've ever seen to see a 5 year old cowboy in a helmet walk his horse at a snail's speed through the barrel course. Afterwards, the big dogs came out to rope cows in teams and finally the event of the evening, bull riding. There was a paniolo from Hawaii and a Canadian cowboy- though oddly he was not dressed in all denim....

Custom camo hats at the local Walmart

 Afterward we rode our bikes in the dark getting hit in the face by giant flying crickets and sprayed by the night time auto lawn sprinklers. We continued past the Ponderosa into downtown Cody where we grabbed a slice of pizza at a ridiculously Hawaiian themed restaurant before heading to the baddest looking bar on the street, the Silver Dollar. We passed the Harleys parked out front with success and were carded by a giant at the door. We posted up at the bar and quickly made friends with the gentleman to my right. His name was JD and he was from "all over," though most recently, Virginia. I don't know if it was his muddled accent(s) or the chew in his bottom lip or the fact that I'd been drinking since the beginning of the rodeo, but I had a very difficult time understanding this very nice man throughout our time together. For example, I heard, "bi-porn" when he asked how the popcorn was that we had bought at the rodeo. Later while discussing food with our new bar back/bouncer friend, Daryl, I heard that there was a, "dragon in the garden" when he was actually using the term "drag it through the garden" which is, according to Wikipedia, a term used for "put everything on it" or "all the veggies" when ordering something like a burger. 

JD was an EMT back in Virginia and we shared some funny stories on patients and cases. He gave us some great tips for our route through VA and the Carolinas next month as well as which areas to avoid while using a sort of racial epithet that I won't repeat here since I'm not down with that. After a quick discussion on how that wasn't really cool in this day and age, we moved on to safer topics. 

Save a horse, ride a buffalo

We shut the bar down, gave hugs to our new friends and hit the skids. We drunk-biked back to Ponderosa where we gorged on leftover elk sausage jambalaya on the floor of the Truckster before passing out. After that comment from the rodeo ticket collector, Kai's been working hard at growing out his hair so that we better fit in down here in the midwest. I think it's working.

The next morning we awoke dry mouthed and in a bad way. We grabbed a bite and did some well needed laundry before heading up the Big Horn National Forest pass. About halfway into it, Kai noticed the temp gauge jump to an alarmingly high level so we pulled over to give the Truckster respite. It was 100 degrees out and we were at a scenic pullout at over 9000 feet. Hungover, we decided to nap while the van's engine cooled. I awoke an hour later sweat dripping from my face and body and asked if it was safe to turn the van and AC back on. Just as we were about to pull out and back on to the highway an old Ford car pulled in with an even older man inside frantically pointing upwards. I thought something must be wrong with the Tuckster and he was attempting to warn us. I jumped out of the van and met the old timer. He was wearing old blue jeans, a large silver belt buckle, a striped western shirt and a giant white cowboy hat. He had multiple metal teeth that seemed to move about when he spoke like ill fitting dentures. He asked excitedly, "Did you see the man feeding the elephant?" I looked back at Kai as if to ask, "What the french is this old geezer talking about?!?!" Just then I looked up into the hills at the impressive rock formations and sure enough saw a rock that looked just like a man feeding an elephant. "Oh wow! I see it now, thanks!" I told him. He looked incredibly pleased as he explained that no one ever notices that and he likes to point it out when he can. He then launched into a completely unrelated diatribe about large foreign corporations such as Dole fruit who were ruining this country and how this land was God's country and that all the rich bastards were ruining it. We thanked him kindly for pointing out the sights for us and slowly began backing up toward the Truckster. 

We pulled into Sheridan, WY just as the sun was setting. I once again consulted Urbanspoon and found a place with a 92% positive rating completed by some 25 votes. Urbanspoon I've discovered really only works in urban areas, where people utilize smartphones and apps and eat foods other than chicken fried steak. It is very difficult to trust a 98% rating when only 3 people have cast votes. I wish that you could see where they were from as well... it would be helpful to know if it was tourists with worldly tastes passing through rating these restaurants or the locals who think think ground black pepper is a spice. Just sayin'... so we ate at Sanfords Grub and Pub. The menu itself was so large that we couldn't both read our own while on the table. The servings and plates were oversized and literally even the fork itself was so large that I could barely comfortably eat with it. But domestic beer was just 1$ on tap with any meal ordered so we pined away with our cartoon-like utensils. The woman next to our table had an upper arm and elbow larger in circumference than my thigh and she was upset that the deep-fried cheesecake didn't also come with ice-cream so she ordered some on the side. That signaled the end of our meal and also the beginning of our new devotion to stop eating so poorly and resume our daily workouts while on this trip. 

We camped that night at a KOA who boasted not only a pool but also free wifi and cable. We don't carry a dish around with us, but we thought it seemed like a good night to get caught up with our favorite shows online. We watched one episode of Weeds when the internet would load no more. It was then that I noticed a bandwidth restriction and we had clearly met ours. Well that's hardly "free wifi" at all... it should tell you, "free wifi good enough to watch just 26 minutes of Weeds and then you're cut off". Angry we had spent the extra money to stay, we went to sleep. We didn't even get to utilize the pool either because it didn't open until noon and check out was 11:00 am! Damn you KOA.

We took a break at a rest stop near the border of WY and South Dakota. As I was just finishing washing my hands in the restroom I heard a small cry for help coming from the last stall. "Hello?" I called. A somewhat elderly, obese woman in the last stall said, "Can you help me off the toilet or go find my husband for me?"  She then directed me where she wanted me to stand and where my hands should be placed and how she wanted to be pulled straight up and not forward towards me. No shit, lady, like I want your poopy ass to fall onto me?!?! "Don't worry ma'am, I've done this before," as I instructed her how to help herself using the mounted metal garbage attached to the wall while I helped. One, two, three and up we came and so did a hot waft of her gaseous toilet bowl fillings, and instantly I was returned to work, only worse, I wasn't getting paid this time. I washed my hands, again, and hit the road. God bless America.