Another gorgeous day! Bright blue skies, no wind, temp up to 80. We started our day with a hike along he Paul Stork Trail. Right in the city, it runs above the Shoshone River. Easy mile+ with good views of this beautiful river, including rafters paddling by.
Next was a trip out to the Buffalo Dam and Reservoir, just six miles out of town. There's an excellent visitors center telling about the challenges of building this dam around 1905. When completed it was the tallest concrete dam in the country. This one was built almost exclusively for irrigation of the Graybull/Bighorn Basin to the east. We also learned that the Shoshone National Forest to the west was the very first named National Forest, by our old friend T. R.! The story here really brings home the point that without these irrigation projects all over the west, primarily engineered by the Bureau of Reclamation, towns like Cody wouldn't exist.
After lunch we headed over to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. This is a world class museum! Actually several museums all under one roof. We rambled around the Draper Natural History Museum, the Firearms Museum (with more than 7,000 guns on display!), the Plains Indian Museum and the Buffalo Bill Museum. We never got to the Western Art Museum - we'll do that tomorrow. Buffalo Bill Cody was quite a character. I'll be looking for a biography!
For dinner we went to the famous Irma Hotel, which Bill Cody built in 1902. The famous cherrywood back bar was across the room. Great meal! Lots of Harley guys around!
Cody is a tourist town for sure. Not only does it have the museums but its also the east entrance to Yellowstone.
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