First, a moment of gratitude for the perplexing fact that none of the places we’ve camped have seemed to have any substantial mosquito population.  Is it the drought?  Are these places just divinely blessed and keeping quiet about it so we all don’t move here?  Whatever the reason, we have been amazed and delighted that night after night, as we cook, eat, and play outdoors, we have suffered nary a bite.  (This is really saying something because Lanie is a total mosquito magnet.  If there is any mosquito within a mile of her, it will arrive and bite her repeatedly.)   We haven’t even pulled the bug spray out of the car.

In the case of our current tipi accommodations, this has been a key factor.  Our tipi walls don’t in fact come all the way to the ground, so there is a good 6 inches of space at floor level (right where we’re sleeping, in fact) that is wide open.  (The top doesn’t close completely either.  We’re not sure what people are supposed to do when it rains, but are grateful we weren’t forced to confront this question.)  The sound of the rushing water in the creek also proved conducive to good sleeping.

We started the day by wading in the creek behind our tipi, which was rather cold and very fast-moving.  Zoe and Nadia managed to work their way upstream a fair distance, and of course Lanie is always game to follow.  (I don’t know why we kid ourselves about the wading thing.  They invariably end up wet and muddy from head to toe.  We ended up letting them go back in later in the afternoon in their bathing suits.)  Then, off to explore Cody.

Cody is the town that was founded by Buffalo Bill, and they don’t let you forget it.  There are lots of Wild West-themed attractions, restaurants, etc.  We hit a couple of these and wandered through a few stores, but in general kept it a pretty low-key day.  The location of the town is beautiful, with mountains rising up in every direction.

 

Our big event of the day was the Cody Nite Rodeo, where we got to see such traditional activities as bull riding, calf roping, barrel racing, and trick riding.  At one point all the kids were called down to the arena (and it was unbelievable how many kids poured out of the crowd).  They then released three calves with ribbons on their tails, and set the kids loose to try to be the first to get a ribbon.  I’ve seldom seen such mayhem.  The kids loved it and all was well, until they sent them back to their seats and somehow Lanie went off the field at the wrong exit.  There were so many kids that we hadn’t seen where she’d gone, and we had all split up and were looking frantically for her when the announcer said there there were two lost little girls in the souvenir shop.  Lanie was rather traumatized by this whole event and had a little trouble enjoying the rest of the rodeo, but she seemed fully recovered the next morning.

***

From Bob:

Various parts of this trip have been hard on each of us, for sure, but lately we should pity Nadia, who desperately yearns to ride – or at least befriend – every horse she sees.  And there are a lot of horses in Wyoming.  There are constant offers for trail rides that she hopefully asks us to consider.  There is little hope in this stage of the trip; her riding will take place at our Colorado ranch residency, in about a week or so.

                Tonight she got the next best thing to actually approaching a horse.  The Cody Nite Rodeo is dripping with cowboy-ness, yet seemingly much more authentic than anything else in this rather touristy town.  It runs, they say, for 94 nights in a row over the spring and summer, and we got to see cowboys and cowgirls riding and roping, racing around barrels, and hanging on for dear life on bucking broncos and steers.  Tonight, nobody was able to hold on long enough to win the bull riding portion of the rodeo.

                As we were here on the last night of the month, however, we were treated the awarding of prize belt buckles to the most consistent competitors in the month of July for each event.   They were nice, big belt buckles, too; we could see them from all the way up in the stands.

                Another thing that marked our night at the rodeo was that the chief rodeo clown’s mother had died earlier today.  Midway through the evening, he knelt down in the middle of the ring with his main sidekicks (two guys with red tassels coming off the back of their clothes – they’re called bullfighters because one main part of their job is to distract the bull so the guy who just fell off the bull has a chance of surviving) and said a prayer.  Then the main clown put his hat back on and went on with his shenanigans.  It’s pretty hardcore here in the World Capital of Rodeo.  It’s drenched with country music, and it smells like a lot of animals pooping, but it’s also almost worth the drive out here just on its own. 

                And it was enough to satisfy Nadia’s horse cravings – for a while.