Date: 22 May 2001 (Teusday)

Start: Absaroka Bay RV Park, Cody WY (169 miles)

End: same

We got up to a beautiful day – high 50’s and not much wind.

After breakfast, we took on the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, a collection of museums:

The Plains Indian Museum

The Buffalo Bill Museum

The Whitney Gallery of Western Art

The Cody Firearms Museum

This is a fantastic, overwhelming, set of exhibits on the subjects. The Western Art museum contains works by all those you’d expect to see including Remington and C.M. Russell. The Plains Indian museum has great exhibits of the lives of the Indians. The firearms museum is huge, since it recently assumed custody of the entire Winchester Repeating Arms collection. The Buffalo Bill museum has many artifacts from his unique life.

But walking slowly through any museum is hard on the lower back, so we left when we’d done a tour of all four museums, about 3.5 hours worth.

We lunched at the trailer, then out to the RV place to find a replacement reach-rod. They had a generic one, so we bought it. Then out for groceries and back to the trailer.

Then I took a hike to K-mart looking for a specific set of slacks (they didn’t have them). On the way back, stopped at the Black Sheep for a draft "Moose Drool", which is an ale made in a Montana microbrewery. Moose Drool is quite good. The bartender said they sell quite a bit of it.

I installed the reach-rod, which is a sleeve with set-screws you slide over the threaded shaft and the extension rod and tighten the set-screws. Then you screw the handle onto the extension rod. It looks as though it will drop off unless frequently tightened. I’d rather have a hollow rod tapped for quarter-twenty that I could screw directly onto the valve shaft. Maybe I can find one somewhere.

Later, we went back to the Black Sheep for dinner. Two "specials" (NY Strip steaks with three ribs and two shrimps) plus a glass of chardonnay for Dolores and two merlot for me cost $41.53. Not bad, considering the cole slaw was fresh and home-made, and the cocktail sauce was also home-made and very good.

So, back to settle and bed. Tomorrow, Yellowstone National Park.