Leg 4 Wapitit/Cody

Leaving Yellowstone by the East exit puts one into a beautiful drive through the Wapiti (pronounced wop pity, Indian for elk) Valley. We have come to believe “beautiful drive” and Wyoming just go together. Teddy Roosevelt called the drive through the Wapiti Valley the most scenic 50 mile drive in the U.S. We descended from about 8600 feet to 6000 feet through canyons and valleys of ever changing but always spectacular views. We shot a few pics out the window, which never works well but captures enough to trigger great memories. We were traveling with our Hitchhiker friends Mike and Sally Theroux and will be meeting Stacy and Sharon Wise (coincidentally, hee hee, Hitchhiker owners also). We have selected a National Forest camp ground, called Wapiti, right on the Shoshone River. We were pleasantly surprised to find the camp ground even nicer than we anticipated. (Opening picture is Big Horn sheep across the river from our camp, they entertained us during several Happy Hours.)

Couple of "window" shots coming down Hiway 14 to Wapiti camp ground.

And here is our great camp site. The Shoshone river is just in front of us, not quite in sight but surely in hearing sound.

Then here are a couple of the Shoshone River rambling through.

By the way, this is only the North Fork of the Shoshone River, pretty big body of water.
And a bit further downstream is Holy City, a rock formation which is supposed to resemble the silhouette of the ancient Holy City of Jerusalem.There is a nice bridge across the Shoshone right at camp and then a dirt road, more like a path, that follows Sweetwater Creek which feeds into the Shoshone. Makes for an adventurous bike ride (and at over 6000', puff, puff) but with magnificent views.
If you look real hard you can just see my bike parked about mid way down the road, which continued to get steeper.

On the canyon wall across the river from camp we spotted Big Horn sheep, mostly all we saw were ewes and their baby's but what great Happy Hour entertainment. They were pretty far away so even with our big lens it was difficult to capture a great shot but Stacy insisted we digitalized those durn sheeps. We tried to invite them down for a cocktail but apparently they have not acquired a taste for scotch, heck they wouldn't even come for Stacy's American bourbon.

There are 6 of those guys in this pic, can you find them all? They really do blend in, natures camouflage works very well. Below is a mom and her two babies.

One more, look at how they "cling" to the rocks.

Well, gotta work a sunset shot and moon shot in here, so after the Big Horns left us The Big Guy kept us entertained with a nice sky, followed by a nice moon.



We have coated windows on the rig to keep the sun load down and help with the cooling. They look mirrored from outside, side benny is we get some added privacy, but a problem is that birds can see themselves in the window and attack their image as an intruder. This little warbler (Audubon's warbler or Yellow-rumped warbler - how would you like to be called a pink-rumped human?) would not leave us alone. He just kept attacking the window time and time again. Nothing I could do would discourage the little bugger. So I shot him - with the camera of course!

We were out cruising one day and stumbled upon these pretty wild yellow roses, man there is stuff everywhere you look, what a place.

Might not be Montana but we sure saw a lot of big sky!

We really loved Wapiti, definitely one of our top favorite campgrounds and one of our favorite areas. Really want to come back here!

We left Wapiti and drove with the Wises the rip roaring entire 32 miles to Cody. Cody is a pretty neat little town, very western, quaint and not too touristy. When we checked into the campground we immediately spotted a big old box addressed to me! The new camera and lens had successfully made it to the Campground, although not yet successfully to me. Since Sharon checked in for the Wises, the owner did not know that Stacy was a Wise, making it easy for him to claim to be me and abscond off into the west with my camera. Fortunately Shelle witnessed this and hauled out her lariat and lassoed the sneaky criminal. Lucky for Stacy there were no high tree limbs or horses around so he was forgiven and not hanged.

Cody has a huge rodeo around and during the 4th of July, very big and very famous. We didn't go to the actual rodeo but discovered "slack time". Those contestants that don't make the "draw" and get into the actual rodeo do get to compete in the slack time. Not as big a deal but still the real thing. Observer/fans can attend slack time for free (right up my alley and budget!) so we did. Really cool because hardly anyone is there except cowboys and stock and you just get in amongst them. Nice treat. Oh, no pics, operator error on the new camera

Also worth mentioning is the William Cody museum. We are not big museum people but this museum is definitely a must see. When you get your tickets they are good for two days, it takes that long to see this marvelous museum (although, us non museum guys did it in one day). Lots of history, a whole wing dedicated to guns, mostly of the era, tons of Buffalo Bill stuff, Annie Oakley stuff, animal stuff, photography stuff and more. If you ever get into town, don't miss it.

The other thing that was fun was to attend was the 4th of July parade. A real small town big deal parade. Everyone even close to Cody was there. The parade was fun, diverse, and very well done. They had everything from mounted cowboys, to floats, to about 30 hot motorcycles, to you name it. Once again camera operated error prevented pictures (I brought the camera but forgot the card - which is like the film). I borrowed a couple of Stacy's pics to post here (hopefully a little cropping was O.K.).

A boat with a 5 piece band!

Happy on lookers, Shelle, Sharon, and Moi.