Dateline July 3-4, 2013, Cody, Wyoming, as in Buffalo Bill Cody
After a great day of seeing Wyoming on the way in, we arrived in Cody in late afternoon. A few things needed doing right away. Fuel for the Roadtrek, and fuel for the body (which is to say, good local meat). We had googled Cody butchers and rolled through town to one. The meats turned out to be as good as they claimed, and they also had a loaf of black rye that turned out to be the best rye we have ever had. On the way back to the KOA we stopped by the Visitor's Bureau, where we learned about the Stampede Parade on the 3rd and the rest of the events leading up to the rodeo on the night of the 4th.
We set up at the KOA. (This is involved. We level the rig with an eight-inch level front to back and side to side, using the orange leveling blocks John's sister Carol gave us when we first got the RV. Water hose, electric, then the satellite dish, which has to be aimed just so for the favorite channels. We do not actually need that to be perfect, but try telling us that at the time.) It was warm, the air conditioner did its job, and we slept well.
Still on eastern time, we were up at 5:30 the next morning. The Visitor's Bureau had told us to park a few blocks off the parade route, leave our chairs on the curb on Main Street, and come back later. Nothing would be touched. We laughed at that, because the same is true at the Masters Tournament in Augusta. You set your chair down at any green you like, walk away for hours, and it will still be there when you come back. Cody and Augusta share, apparently, a sense of how chairs work.
Breakfast was at Pete's Cafe. It is the kind of place that could have been a Norman Rockwell drawing, all soda-fountain bones and warm baked goods. We ate well, then walked the shops on Main Street. John has a thing for western belts and we found a good one, plus a buckle to replace a broken one on an older belt.
The parade was set to start at 9:30. We went back to our chairs. Anyone who grew up in an American small town remembers a 4th of July parade like the one we were about to see: country, flag, military, kids, horses, simple wholehearted celebration. There is less of this kind of parade than there used to be, in some parts of the country at any rate. Cody still has it, full strength. The lead color guard was a piece of US military history.
This is the only active mounted color guard in the entire United States military, based at the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Barstow, California, established in 1968. They lead with the flag.
We watched the marching bands play "God Bless America," "The Marine Hymn," "I'm Proud to Be an American," "This Is a Great Country." The rest of the parade in pictures.
People from every walk of small-town life were in this parade. Military, US Forest Service, rodeo riders, clowns, kids. What made it special was that it was honest. Cody on the 3rd of July is just being itself.
After the parade we drove about twenty miles out of town to look for wild mustangs. The McCullough Peaks Wild Horse Management Area is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
It is about 100,000 acres. The herd is managed at around 100 horses, with the rest going up for BLM adoption each year through a formal application process. We kept driving up and down looking for an entrance to the dirt access road. We went too far, asked a gentleman by the side of the road, and got pointed back toward Cody with instructions to watch the right side of the road for the horses. The first stop turned out to be a barbed-wire gate with a note about the mustangs. We opened the gate, drove in maybe a quarter-mile, and looked out over the valley. No horses, and the track was getting rough. We turned back.
Pulled the Roadtrek back through the gate, locked the door behind, realized the keys were still inside. John can be a little slow at times.
A few more miles toward town and a better entrance appeared. We drove in about a mile, and off to the right we found a herd of wild horses.
A few hundred yards over the ridge in any direction and we would have missed them entirely. What an unbelievable thing to see in person.
Back to camp for a rest and a clean-up before the rodeo. The KOA ran a shuttle bus to the Stampede Rodeo grounds, leaving at 7:00 PM. The Cody Stampede has been held every July 1st through 4th since 1919, and is considered one of the best outdoor rodeos in the country. We arrived at our seats, looking directly down at the chutes for the events. The battery in the camera died, so the rest is iPhones.
To open the night, the Marine Mounted Color Guard from the parade rode into the ring. The local veterans followed with the flag. A young girl sang the national anthem.
Then an all-female drill team.
Then the events. Individual calf roping. Team roping. Steer wrestling. Saddle bronc and bareback bronc. Bull riding. Barrel racing. The rodeo clowns, who turn out to be doing some of the most dangerous work on the grounds while making it look like comedy.
And then the sunset, of course.
Cody is a great town to visit. It is all-American, with a friendly populace and the real history of the old west still close to the surface. If you can make it here for the Stampede, do.
On to Yellowstone.
