Road Trip 2012: Monday 9/24

10 miles, and still camped at the KOA in Cody, Wyoming

One of the RV forums I follow suggested that the Buffalo Bill Historical Center was well worth a visit, so Zoey and I went.  Well, actually Zoey had to stay in the truck.  But she did get to see the outside.  :-)

This place is AMAZING!!  There are basically five museums housed in one facility.  I spent five hours there today, and I just skimmed the the surface of what was there.  John and Ellen, who camped next to me last night and are also again camped next to me tonight, went to the Historical Center today.  They only got through two of the museums and are going back Tuesday to finish.  The five museums include: The Plains Indians Museum, The Whitney Gallery of Western Art, The Cody Firearms Museum, The Greater Yellowstone Natural History Museum, and the Buffalo Bill Museum.

My favorite was the art museum.  There was a considerable amount of space devoted to Frederick Remington.  His studio was actually displayed.  I have always known Remington for his sculpture, but there was a great deal of his painting on display as well.  It was very impressive.

One of the sculptures I came across was done by Steve Kestrel.  Steve was a neighbor and friend of Dave and Ann Wright when they lived in the Fort Collins area of Colorado.  In fact, my son Cory actually worked for Steve a bit when Cory lived in Colorado getting ready to go to Grad School there.

I could go on forever, but to sum it up, The Buffalo Bill Historical Center is an outstanding experience, and anyone in the area should experience it.  Here is a sampling of photos from the other four museums.

Red pins show where The Wild West Show performed.
There appear to be pins in Ogdensburg, Watertown, and Brockville, Canada

One small section of the huge Yellowstone Natural History Museum.

I got back to the campground about 2:00 and did a load of laundry and caught up on email.  A big 5th wheel camper pulled in next to me with Saskatchewan plates on it.  Two couples traveling together were camping in it.  The husbands were cousins and they take a trip together every year.  A half hour later my truck camper friends John and Ellen from yesterday pulled in to stay another day.  We all ended up sitting around and visited for several hours.  Again, Zoey was the social lubricant, like a politician working the crowd.  The Canadian camper owner is a beef cattle farmer, and we got on to the discussion of industrial farms verses smaller farms.  This couple is on the smaller side, and he holds an outside job as well.  He mentioned that Chinese funded holding companies are buying large amounts of land in the Saskatchewan area making it near impossible for young farmers to get started.

On Tuesday Zoey and I are driving through Yellowstone National Park on our way to Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho...........