August 7 - August 13, 2015
I have a friend named Kathi Marler who lives in my neighborhood in Florida. She is originally from Idaho. When she heard that we were going to Yellowstone, she encouraged us to spend a day or two in Cody, Wyoming. When we left Yellowstone, we had intended to make the Black Hills area of South Dakota our next stop. But, luckily, my guidebook had warned that Sturgis, SD would be hosting the 75th annual Sturgis Motorcycle rally from August 2nd until August 9th and that half a million (I'm not kidding) bikers would be descending on the entire Black Hills area. And if that wasn't bad enough, all hotel rooms and campgrounds within a 2 hour drive of Sturgis would be full and that their rates would be trippled or even quadupled during the rally. Naturally, we wanted to stay far away until they were gone. So a day or two in Cody turned into 6 nights.
It was a short and beautiful drive from East Yellowstone to Cody. We had booked a few nights at the very pleasant Ponderosa Campground. But sites were hard to come by in our campground and at the surrounding campgrounds and hotels. Despite the fact that Cody is a full 6 hour drive from Sturgis, the bikers had arrived. They were everywhere. Between the tattoos, the doo rags on their heads, and the vroom vrooming everywhere they went, they were making me crazy. Seriously, though, they were very well behaved and certainly kept things interesting and colorful!
When we arrived, the nice folks at the campground steered us to a cowboy chuckwagon dinner and show, followed by the Cody night rodeo. We had a blast! The dinner at the Cody Cattle Company was very good, and the music was even better. The 3 very talented musicians played western, country, and southern rock.
When the show ended, we went next door to the "Cody Nite Rodeo." Cody, which bills itself as the "Rodeo Capital of the World," has a rodeo every night during June, July, and August. There was bareback riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, barrel racing, and bull riding. It was a hoot!
We spent two full days at the excellent Buffalo Bill Museum of the West which is sometimes called the "Smithsonian of the West." While that's a bit of an exageration, it's definitely a must-do if you're ever in Cody. The Buffalo Bill Museum is actually 6 different museums. In addition to a museum about Bill, there's the Draper Natural History Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Whitney Museum of Western Art, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the McCracken Research Library. We really enjoyed it, Thank you, Kathi for steering us that way!
We had intended to spend 3 or 4 nights in Cody but ended up being there for six nights. While we enjoyed our time there, staying for six nights wasn't our choice. When you're traveling for an extended period you have to figure out what to do about your mail. Most of our bills are either automatically charged to a credit card or else delivered to my email box. I then pay the bills online through my bank's online banking system. But you've still got to figure out what to do about the rest of the mail. The post office will only hold mail for 30 days, so that doesn't work. And picking up, sorting, and forwarding your mail is really too much to ask of a neighbor, even one who's a good friend. So we have been using a mail forwarding service. It works like this: I file a temporary forwarding order with the post office, and have the mail forwarded to my unique "personal mailbox" with American Home Base in Tallahassee. When I know where I'm going to be for a few days I call American Home Base and give them the address for them to forward my mail. I then pick it up from a campground, relative, or even general delivery at the post office that I have designated. At least that's the way it's supposed to work.
This time, our mail didn't show up. We waited and waited, extending our stay for one more day after one more day until we finally gave up and left. The nice folks at the campground assured me that they would forward it if it ever shows up, but I'm not betting on the post office.
Rick played golf on two of the days we extended, while I did some crafting. And on our last day we visted a very interesting museum called Heart Mountain which was a World War II Japanese American confinement site. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, 120,000 Japanese Americans (many American Citizens) were confined by the US government in various "relocation camps." This one was chosen for its remote location and its proximity to a railroad line.
Heart Mountain is now a National Historic Landmark. They've done a really good job with it. Particularly moving is a film with interviews with some of the surviving detainees. Many of them lost everything. Before they were sent to the relocation camps, they were kept for 30 days in an "assembly center." During that time, their bank accounts were frozen. Thus they were unable to make payments on mortgages or other business obligations, and most lost any property that they owned to forclosure. Many also found that their possessions had been lost or stolen before they were released 4 years later with nothing but a train ticket and $30.
But mostly, I was impressed with the grace with which they suffered through this imprisonment and the ingenuity that they used to make their life better in the camps. They formed schools, clubs, exercise classes, and institutions of self government. They grew vegetables and flowers. They built furniture with scrap wood and hung sheets to provide some privacy in the one room cells that entire families were expected to share. Here's a shot of an example of one of those rooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment