June 25, 2001
Billings, Montana — Cody, Wyoming
Day one, week two, and one the shorter driving days of the trip. Win’s Aunt Laura was determined to feed us like humans, instead of the McDonald’s- and candy-fueled cretins we were becoming. After the terrific dinner upon our arrival in Billings, we awoke to bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast on a cool morning for Billings in the summer. We spent the morning and early afternoon hanging around the house, visiting, and thoroughly enjoying a break from nonstop driving.
After sandwiches and potato salad for lunch, Laura packed us up more sandwiches for the road, along with some cantaloupe (actual fruit!), which apparently was a big enough deal to specifically note in my journal. We bid farewell to our gracious host and took off for some shopping at Best Buy and Wal-Mart, restocking the van’s food and music reserves.
Unfortunately, we spent more time after lunch in Billings than we’d intended, which wasn’t bad, but it cut short the time we’d expected to have in our destination: Cody, Wyoming. Just over a hundred miles of state highways south of Billings, we had plans to visit the Buffalo Bill Historical Center before attending our first rodeo at the Cody Stampede. As we hurried back down into Wyoming, we got our first real look at the mountains dominating the next five days of our journey. We approached the eastern edge of the North Abrasoka range where heights reach above 9000 feet. Cody itself sits on the edge of the range at 5000 feet, which was up more than two thousand from Billings. Officially out of the plains and into the Rockies, our trip got western quickly with our plans for the rest of the day.
Pulling into the parking lot of the Buffalo Bill museum it occurred to us that we might have to pay to get in. I don’t remember what it was back then but it’s about $20 per person now, so we realized we wouldn’t have enough time to make it worth it, especially considering we were going to have to pay for the rodeo that evening. Wider lens view, I am so thrilled we prioritized the rodeo, as it was one of the most fun evenings of the entire trip. But it’s a real bummer we didn’t get to see all of the amazing things the Buffalo Bill museum must contain. We made it as far as the statue out front, checked out the prices, got right back in the van and headed toward the rodeo.
I don’t know how old other rodeos around the country are, but the one in Cody has been going without interruption since 1919 (it appears it even went on in summer 2020). Bill Cody held his last Wild West Show in 1913 as a party for the Prince of Monaco. When he died at age 70 in 1917, tributes came in from Woodrow Wilson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and King George V. The rodeo began in his honor two years later and has been going strong ever since. The official Cody Stampede is around July 4, but night rodeos, what we came in for, have been going since 1938.
Leaving the museum on an outrageously hot day, the *low* that night was 78!, we drove straight to the Dairy Queen to get a Blizzard and a dash of air conditioning that wouldn’t cost us in gas mileage. Dairy Queens are all the same, nothing special was supposed to happen there. And yet! When we approached the line was enough to make the most patient person pull out their hair. But as we got in the line and started to chat with those in front of us, we realized all these people were a group from eastern North Carolina! It doesn’t matter, but I wish I could remember exactly where they were from. Something like Greenville. Anyway, this delighted us to no end, as we had something in common with this massive group of annoying children. The difference between 17 and 16 of course being a year, but the difference between 18 and 17 is clearly a decade, and includes an understanding of the world at large. Or so we told ourselves.
We’d been excited about the rodeo anyway, but when we realized this group, whatever it was in the middle of summer, was headed to the same place as us, we ignored the heat, ignored the cost, and focused exclusively on kickin it with these North Carolinians. As previously mentioned, we weren’t above keeping our eyes out for attractive women, and we immediately made friends with one such girl from the group. We even traded emails, the way to express your interest in the weird period before cell phones and social media, but after the internet had started to take over.
After waiting forever to get our Blizzards, we hightailed it over to the Stampede, paid our way, and entered the most unique place any of the three of us had ever been. We sat opposite the school group so we’d at least get our own experience, and what an experience it was.
Children rode sheep, grown men did their best to hang on to bucking broncos, all ages lassoed anything that moved (it was on this day I learned what the word lariat means), and adults dressed as clowns kept the more dangerous animals from dismembering anyone insane enough to enter the ring surrounded by enthusiastic spectators, from far and near. If you’ve ever been to a soccer game and heard a crowd cheer for the home team executing a well-placed back pass, or baseball fans cheering a batter for holding off on a pitch and earning a ball, you’ll recognize how the crowd at the rodeo knew to wildly support nuances of the events that passed clear over our heads. But the positivity and support were infectious, and over time, we picked up on a few of the details. The feeling of understanding what everyone around you already knows is, particularly as a young person, an elevation to the status of the learned, and it’s a feeling that one never willingly relinquishes.
As the official event wound down, we followed the group from North Carolina back to where they were staying at the Ponderosa Campground, back by the Dairy Queen. This did not last long though, as the teacher, or whoever, in charge recognized us as definitively not part of the group and not so kindly asked us to get lost. So that was that, but it sure was fun having someone to talk to who wasn’t just us or a much older family member. We needed to find a place to crash anyway, and without anything reserved (clearly the campground nearby was completely full), we drove a mile back west and parked it at Wal-Mart.
So another day down, with the duality of quality family time and exciting new experience bookending a terrific start to our second week. We hadn’t gone far down the road but we’d added a lot to our story, and over time, our memories. Not much else to say about sleeping at Wal-Mart, so we’ll end it here and come back with the day of least planning and most luck yet.
