After yesterday's wild adventure, and since the weather report for today was rain, it only made sense that today would be a quite day at the museum. We made a Wal-Mart run, refilled some prescriptions at Walgreen's and picked up a box at the post office before it started to rain. In fact, the first few drops were just beginning to fall when we arrived at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West a mere 2 miles from the hotel.
     We got there at about 10:30, just in time for the 11:00 trolley tour around Cody . So we grabbed a quick cup of coffee and headed out on the trolley. The trolley ride took about an hour, and the tourguides were informative and entertaining, the real problem was that most of the historical parts of Cody had been demolished over the years, so they used large picture posters to show what the current site used to look like. It showed the importance of historical and preservation groups within a town to keep some historical perspective. The tour was fun, and we even got to drive over to the Buffalo Bill Dam, which we will try to spend more time visiting while we are here.
     By the time we got back to the Buffalo Bill Center, it had really begun to rain. So we hurried inside and began to visit the five sections of the center. The Buffalo Bill Center for the West is really five museums off one central hub. We started with the Draper Natural History Museum, which is mostly a taxidermy exhibit of the local wildlife. It was really well done, and the exhibits looked very lifelike. There was even a lab in the basement where you could watch the technician stuff one of the smaller examples .
     Next was the Buffalo Bill Museum that was devoted to clothing and memorabilia of Bill's life and traveling show. It also showed some of the guns and equipment of other performers like Annie Oakley. There was also a lot of artwork depicting the show and some audio and video clips.
    The third section, and the one we both liked best was the Plains Indian Museum. It contained a lot of clothing and ceremonial dress and paraphernalia used by the Native Americans as part of their culture. There were tepees and earth houses showing how they lived. Mostly Jody and I marveled at the beadwork and intricacies of the ceremonial dress.
     The fourth section was the Whitney Western Art Museum and was dedicated to the art of the old west. About half of the artwork was from the mid to late 1800's and were painted at the time of all the US expansion in to the Indian territories and some were really well done. The rest of the artwork was more modern and included some large and small sculptures. The modern art was interesting, but I preferred the older period paintings .
     The fifth and last section was the Cody Firearms Museum. It was a huge collection of mostly rifles and handguns of the old west. It was arranged by manufacturer, and showed the evolution of each manufacturers product line over time.Not being much of a gun enthusiast myself, some of the engineering subtleties were lost on me.
     We finished up on the museum around 3:00 and decided to head back to the hotel to relax. On the trolley tour, the tourguide pointed out the original Irma Hotel founded by Buffalo Bill and named after his daughter. They had a gunfight reenactment every night at 6:00 so we decided to pack the box for the post office to ship home our excess stuff and get it mailed off before the post office closed. While we were at the post office, we ran into our tourguide from the morning, and he remembered Jody from her fringed coat. We also ran into some woman who had just returned from moving a friend to Ormond Beach. She had lived around Glacier National Park in Montana so she had some advice on what to see when we went there .
     We made it to the Irma Hotel at 5:00 and had a decent dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes for me, and a steak salad for Jody. We finished at 5:45, just in time for a little window shopping before the gunfight at 6:00. It was ok, certainly entertaining for the kids who were there. They used real guns, loaded with blanks, and I'd almost forgotten how loud a gun really is. The noise did scare a couple of the younger children and they had to leave. It was fun, and we were able to see Doc Holliday and Annie Oakley shoot Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Dirty Dan while we were entertained by Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock.
     So it's back to the hotel and an early night so we can get an early start in the morning to Yellowstone as the weather is supposed to be sunny in the mid-70's tomorrow

15.1 miles today
5504.1 miles total

0.0 gallons today
133.120 gallons total