Billings And Back To Wyoming

Billings was rather miss-able...is that a word? Bigger than I thought and clearly a business town. The small "down town" had it's share of tall buildings and fancy restaurants. Frankly...the best part of the stop was the dinner at Walker's Grill. We have had our share of lodge looking saloons with huge portions. This was the first salad of the trip that had items beyond iceberg lettuce. :)

Since Billings didn't turn into the quaint Western Town we had hoped for, we headed out right away to Cody, Wyoming. This is also the Eastern entrance into Yellowstone National Park. I've been through Cody about 10 years ago and remembered it as a very rustic small town. It's home to the oldest rodeo in the country....continuously running every night since 1938. In 2001 when we came through, we saw some great home sites right outside Cody in Wapiti, but with that entrance to Yellowstone closed so much of the year, we would be cut off from Jackson Hole and Cody was not a viable option for us as full time residents.....now? I could easily live in this Western town.

We headed straight to the Buffalo Bill Museum. Cody is where Buffalo Bill entertained people with his antics and the headquarters for his famous traveling show. The Museum is wonderful! This is well laid out and hosts a great collection of various Western artifacts. Designed with interactive displays and classrooms/labs for school trips this is a very easily managed center. There are several wings of the center which feed off a center concourse. The different sections are:

The Plains Indians
The Buffalo Bill Display
The Western Fine Art Wing
The Yellowstone Natural History
The Firearms

After a few hours soaking up some culture, we roamed the city for awhile and had great burgers on the sunny deck of the Silver Dollar Saloon. We heard they were great burgers, and that was true.

Late afternoon had us headed to Jackson Hole through Yellowstone....we had intended to spend time in the parks that day, but we just ran out of daylight. The drive was beautiful, though. Golden light was all around as we traveled past Yellowstone Lake and past the Tetons. We would have a long day the next day to see all we wanted to, but the day in Cody was such fun that it was worth it.