While getting dressed for my meeting, I was trying to keep in mind that this was Wyoming and not Houston or even Albuquerque. They are more laid back than we are, so I decided to wear a more casual outfit consisting of a cute black/white cotton skirt with a pleated black top, to keep it simple I decided to go without stockings, shocking I know. But, I was looking for a more casual corporate look. When it comes to shoes I do not worry about the environment I wore my open toed black 3 inch spiked heel shoes. They look great with this outfit even without stockings. Apparently not many women in Cody Wyoming wear these kinds of heels because they just looked at them until finally one asked how in the world I walked in them. I must have given her a look of "What the hell are you talking about" because she immediately apologized and then I realized she was talking about my shoes. "That's easy" I told her "I am from the South, instead of walking shoes little baby girls get their first set of heels." I think she thought I was joking.
After my meeting Joshua and I headed to Yellowstone National Park. It is about 50 miles west of Cody. It is a really beautiful drive, we got there about 1 or 1:30 and went through the East Entrance, it costs $25 a car to get in, a bit pricey but much more worth it than the Grand Canyon. Josh drove so I was free to look around, my main goal was to see Elk. I have this thing with wanting to see Elk in the wild. In my years of living in New Mexico I have only see Elk in the wild once and that was in Arizona when we went to the Grand Canyon.
We decided to take the main loop around the entire park this is a very long drive. It took us about 5-6 hours of driving and stopping here and there to look around. There is a gigantic lake in the middle of the park called, Yellowstone Lake. The lake is 136 square miles with 110 miles of shoreline. It's deepest depth is almost 400 feet and it never gets above 60 degrees. There are rivers, creeks, streams and smaller lakes in the park and they recommend you not swim in any of them because the water is so cold. Any body of water that is feed by the hot springs is completely off limits for swimming or fishing.
The main thing I was surprised by was the lack of wildlife. Don't get me wrong, there were about a million Bison or Buffalo roaming around, actually there are about 4,000 Bison in Yellowstone at this time. But, we did not see any Elk, Mountain Lions (I think I am okay with this one), Bighorn Sheep, etc. We did see a mother Black Bear and 2 cubs, but they were off the road and being chased by people, I would have loved to see her take out a few tourists. Joshua saw a coyote or two, but that was about it for animals.
We stopped at some of the geothermal areas where they have the hot springs and geysers. We only saw Old Faithful actually erupt they rest just sort of blew smoke and steam. But they were pretty none the less. The one thing that was purely evident around the park was the remains of the Great Fire of 1988 which burned 36% of the parks acreage or about 793,00 acres. In between all of the burned out and dead trees are new trees, shrubs and plant life. There is a small wildfire burning outside of the park that when we went by in the late morning it was just smoke but by late evening their were several smaller fires burning. I learned that wildfires are not like a city fire, they are happening for a reason it is Mother Natures way of taking care of things. And some plants and trees require intense heat in order to open their cones for the seeds to fall out. As city folk we see fire as bad but the country folk see it as a way of life and part of living in the wilderness.
We finished up our trip by stopping to see Old Faithful, it was nice but I was tired. So we waited for it to erupt and then headed home.
Here is a map of our travel path and where the sights were located.
If you have not had a chance stop by and see the photos at
Next Up:
Day Four...Wild Horses
Day Four...Wild Horses