The second half of our annimoon was worlds different from the first half. We arrived at Blackwater Creek Ranch which is in between Yellowstone National Park and Cody, Wyoming. The ranch was on a beautiful property and had very basic cabins, maybe a little too basic to be considered "annimoon appropriate". Townsend actually said, "can we go back to Jackson now?" as soon as we arrived. But I reassured him that Cody would be just as amazing as Jackson. On the drive into Cody we were amazed by the drastic change in landscape. The Tetons were mountainous with sprawling valleys; lush with trees and flowers. But the landscape around Cody was dry and stark, and reminded me of something you would expect to see in Utah or Arizona.
Cody is named after is founder, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who established the town because of it close proximity to Yellowstone and the vast opportunities of this area. Buffalo Bill brought the tales of the Cowboys and Indians all across the world and left his legacy on the town of Cody in a big way.
Our first stop in this cute little town was lunch because we were starved. We went to the Silver Dollar Bar for a cheese burger and some bud light which hit the spot, and then spent a few hours walking around town.
After walking around Cody, I dragged Townsend to the Old Town Trail, which I also admittedly thought would be a total tourist trap. I thought this was going to be a tacky recreation of old log cabins but I was so wrong. These cabins and buildings were all carefully relocated from across the state of Wyoming to create a village that would be typical of the era of Cowboys and Indians. Inside each cabin are artifacts from that time including furniture, animal hides, and photographs of the inhabitants of these cabins such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as the "Hole in the Wall Gang".
There are also several cabins with incredible Native American artifacts including handmade clothing, jewelry, and weapons. The last gem of the Old Town Trail was a saloon that looked like something out of a movie. Townsend and I both wished we could sit down and have a drink at the old saloon. All the original wallpaper, seating, and bar were still in tact, there were even bullet holes in the walls! Overall, this was a really great stop in Cody!
On our anniversary, we celebrated at the Rodeo because Cody is the Rodeo Capital of the World! We drank bud light from cans and watched men ride around on bulls until the sun went down! And we liked it so much we went back the next night :)
The next day was definitely our best day in the Cody area, and a top highlights of the whole trip. We started our day with a horseback ride through the mountains and then began our journey to Big Horn Canyon. I will tell you a secret, sometimes Townsend doesn't love my grand ideas to drive all over the state in search of the best photograph or most obscure view. In these cases, i have to tell him little white lies. So I told him Big Horn Canyon was about 40 minutes from our cabin (it was really more like an hour and half).
So we drove and he started to get a little annoyed that it was taking so long but I convinced him that since we had come this far, we needed to just keep going. Again the landscape was changing as we got closer to Montana and we finally pulled up to the state park. It felt a little eerie because there was no one around. The first thing we saw was a sign that read, warning, wild horses, and sure enough, right in front of us was a herd of wild horses. At this point Townsend was sold. We continued to drive in search of the canyon I had seen photographs of and after driving for about 10 minutes, we found it. There was only one other car parked so we were free to roam around. The view was really so incredible and we just sat there for a while taking it all in, Townsend kept saying he felt like he could feel the Indians and see them on the far ridge, hehehe.
I think what was so special about this day and this place was how few people were there. We were totally alone in the park which was so different from the crowd we saw in the Tetons and what we experienced the next day at Yellowstone.
Our last day, we braved Yellowstone. Overall, the park is really beautiful and so different from the Tetons. It is HUGE and takes forever to get around. There are crowds everywhere and its almost impossible to get a parking spot at every attraction. The drive was beautiful and we saw a ton of bison walking very close to the road and even on the road. Each of the attractions were really unique and fun to see, but I will say that the crowds kind of ruined it for us. We just wanted to turn around and drive back to Big Horn Canyon so we could really enjoy the peace of being out west. We stayed for as long as we could stand it and then headed back to our cabin to pack to head home the following day.
Once we were packed I checked Instagram and was surprised to see that the road back to the airport had been closed due to forest fires in Yellowstone. We looked at a map and saw that our only other option was to wake up at 5am and drive 6 hours back to Jackson instead of the much shorter 3 hour drive we were anticipating. The good news is, we like to drive and we got to see a different part of the state we had not seen before. Once we got back to the Tetons we could barely even see the mountain range due to all of the smoke from the wild fire. We were lucky to get back to the airport!
Wyoming knocked our socks off for sure! Hopefully we can go back soon!
