Cody, WY

After spending the night in a parking lot in Deadwood, we woke up bright and early to head to our next destination, Cody, WY.  Cody was about 360 miles away which was about a 6 hour drive (which really turned out to be about a 8 hour drive for us...).  The drive from Deadwood to Cody was quite pretty though.  It had been raining so the sky was still over cast and as we climbed the mountain, we were driving in the clouds:

As we got into Wyoming and drove through the Big Horn National Forest, we saw some more amazing sights.  We saw a couple of big moose.  Below is a picture of a mama moose and her baby is in the bush:

Coming down, the mountain in Big Horn was quite steep.  We stopped at one point coming down the mountain to let Colby go to the bathroom.  Because we stopped so fast on the hill, our brakes started to get hot.  So we needed to let them rest a while.  On the side of the road where we stopped, we saw this cool waterfall and rapids.  When the brakes had cooled and Colby had got to the bathroom, we put the truck in Granny gear and tried to crawl down the rest of the mountain as slow and safe as we could.  We still had 8 miles of steep downhill to go.  We finally made it down with no problems and continued to Cody.  

Along the way we listened to a CD called LDS Laughs.  One of the speakers made up a few jokes about "You Might Be A Mormon If..."  They were so funny.  One of the jokes he said, "You might be a Mormon if your family drives through a small town and doubles its population."  Well it is sad to say but we did just that.  I wish I could remember the name of the Wyoming town we drove through but I do remember the population sign said 20!  Well there were 20 of us so we doubled the population.  We must be Mormons!  I thought that was pretty funny.

As we got to Cody, the first stop we made was to the Cody Murals: 

This was a really neat experience to see this Mural.  This mural, pioneer museum, and visitor center is all located in an actual working LDS chapel in Cody.  The Mural depicts the first 70 years of the Church including the beginnings with Joseph Smith's first vision, to the expansion and pioneer treks west, to settling in the Salt Lake Valley. Images of the first eight prophets of the church are also in the mural. The Mural is absolutely beautiful.  The mural was painted by Edward Grigware, a local artist.  Glen Nielson and Llyod Taggart, both active members of the church, wanted the chapel in Cody to be more than just a chapel for worship, they wanted it to provide a way for tourists to learn more about the Mormon faith.  They asked Grigware to paint the mural and he accepted.  Since Grigware was not a member of the Church, he spent a year researching the history of the church so that he would be able to accurately depict with feeling the journey and history of the church.  I think he did a great job.  He has since painted murals for the Los Angeles temple.  The missionaries at the Mural said that Grigware never did become a member of the Church because he promised his dying wife that he would never join that Mormon church.  You know he felt something though because he said that while he was painting the Mural, a hand greater than his own was guiding his brush.  Inside the chapel/visitor center is also a Pioneer Museum full of information and items from the first pioneers in Cody.  This was a really cool stop.

After seeing the Mural, we headed downtown to see Cody.  Since Cody, WY is named after Buffalo Bill Cody, we had to see one of his shows.  

Here is the wild bunch including (left to right) Fifi Larue, Sundance Kid, Mississippi, Butch Cassidy, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Bandit Queen, Johnny Ringo (turned sheriff), and finally the man himself, Buffalo Bill Cody.  Each day in Cody they have these Wild West shows in the streets.  And no Wild West show would be complete without a shoot out: 

Of course the good guys won the bad guys in the shoot out.  The Cody Gunfighters put on a good show.  Colby loved seeing the cowboys and the gun fight. 

The Gunfighters even posed for pictures with us.  They were very friendly.  

After the gunfight, we walked through the Cody Dug Up Gun Museum.  It was really interesting to see all of the guns in this collection.  The owner of this museum has been collecting and finding old guns for nearly 30 years.  The guns in the museum range anywhere from the Civil War to WWII and more.  

We went back to the Irma Hotel where the gun fight was and took some really funny pictures on their awesome bar stools:

As you can see, we had a little too much fun on the stools.  In fact the people around us were even taking pictures of us on the stools.  Yeah we are weirdos.  

We decided to spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  When we parked, there was maybe one other trailer in the parking lot but by the time we went to bed, there were like 20 trailers.  It looked like an RV park, it was so funny.