Day 16 Bozeman to Casper

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Day 16 July 19
Bozeman to Casper
Bozeman with 38,000 people is the largest city in Montana. Imagine that. Since we entered the US there have been lots of motorcycles everywhere. Wonder if it has something to do with Sturgis and the big motorcycle event they have. I loved driving through Big Sky Country. Everything was so wide open and you could see for miles. Everything looked very green so I imagine they had been receiving a lot of rain. Our first and only stop of the day was in Cody, Wyoming at the Cody Museum. It is divided into five sections, Plains Indians, Weapons, Cody himself, Natural History, and western art. It was all very interesting. They had lots of example of clothing and utensils made by various tribes. I skipped the arsenal but did manage to see Little Joe, Hoss, and Ben Cartwright’s actual guns along with Johnny Ringo’s. The western art included several artists who did illustrations for dime novels and magazines at the turn of the century. We had been to several natural history museums so decided to do a quick run through. Lots of hands on exhibits. Cody’s exhibit was all about Cody, probably the way he would have wanted it. It’s interesting that the main person who presented the stereotype of the blood thirsty savage to the world Is honored with such a nice museum. They even point out that the Indians considered his a good friend and felt that he treated them as equals. The most interesting item I saw was an autograph of Sitting Bull. It said it was taken from an autograph book one of the performers had. He had very good penmanship!
We left there and proceeded to the Irma Hotel in downtown Cody. Cody built the hotel thinking tourists going to Yellowstone would stop but the railroad bypassed it so he got them to put in a sour but the hotel was not a success. It has a beautiful bar, a gift from Queen Victoria. They say it the most photographed item in Cody! After a very late lunch we drove to Casper to stay at a Hampton Inn. The room was fine but the only place around to eat was a place called BJ’s. And I do not mean BJ’s of fish taco fame. This place was a disaster. A wanna be Denny’s with terrible food and hopelessly frazzled waitresses.

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