Day 27 - Eagle Creek Campground to Cody, Wyoming - 44 Miles

So, what do you do when you're dry-camping and you can't use your breakfast coffee maker or toaster? I know what we did. We drove into town and had breakfast at a local restaurant. Of course I ate a granola bar before we rolled. I thought I'd get too hungry before we traveled the 44 miles to Cody, Wyoming, found a restaurant, found a place to park the rig a couple of blocks from the main street, then walked back to the restaurant. We did get lucky once we got there. Even though the place looked like it was Cody's favorite place for breakfast, our hostess found us a table that they had been reserving just for us.

Truth to tell, Concetta and I don't eat breakfast out more than about four times a year. Most of the time we just can't stand the weak, tasteless coffee that most restaurants serve. At home we've gotten used to the best stuff, at least for grind-it-yourself beans from nice places in Africa or South America. Other than Sweetie Pies in Placerville, California, I can't even think of a restaurant in or near northern Nevada where I would recommend their java to anyone.

I can't say the food was all that great where we ate, a place called Grannies or Grandmas or some similar nostalgic title. I had the oatmeal because I had filled up on a granola bar for some reason. The raisins were pretty fresh, but the oatmeal itself was evidently made with water and bordered on tasteless. I added brown sugar for umph. The restaurant ought to try cooking with the product called, "The Silver Palate," and use milk in the recipe instead of water. THEN they might have something.

Concetta had poached eggs, hashbrowns, and wheat toast. I don't know about the eggs and hashbrowns, but the toast was as tasteless as the oatmeal. When Concetta gave me her last piece I slathered it with grape jam, but it didn't help much. Amazingly enough, Concetta says she liked the eggs and hashbrowns, possibly even the best over easy eggs and hashbrowns she's ever had in a restaurant. Go figure. I was hoping for a consensus on the mundane nature of the food, but alas, no soap. So if you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, and you're looking for sometimes good, sometimes not so good food, Grannie's is the place, or perhaps it Grandma's. Oh, and by the way, the Coffee is predictably mediocre, but the service is just outstanding. Guess they had to be good at something.

After we were finished with breakfast, the next item on the agenda was drive to the Ponderosa RV camp that had been recommended to us by Dave and Berta, two of our fellow campers at Eagle Creek last night. The Ponderosa, Dave told us, is located just (more than a few) steps away from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, our intended touring destination for the next two days. Dave turned out to be mostly right, since we're tireless walkers, but someone less ambulatory might need transportation from the camp.

We were a little worried that the Ponderosa might not have a space ready at such an early hour, being that it was right after breakfast and only 10:00 a.m., but we went ahead and parked in the entrance-way and I marched right up to the front desk. There I met the best comedian that I have encountered on this whole trip. I spent so much time laughing and joking with him, as I tried to check in, that it must have taken me a good twenty minutes before we even got to the money part.

Since he had turned every other sentence out of my mouth into a comedy routine, I thought he was kidding when he said, "Don't take those," when I slipped my credit card onto the countertop.

"No?" I raised an eyebrow, waited for the punchline.

He said, "Nope, never have. We'll take a check, though."

"Oh," I said. "I'll have to go get my wife and the check book."

He waved me off. "Don't worry about it. Go pick out your spot and when you've parked in the one you like, come back and pay then." He pushed the camp map across the counter. "Here, take the map. You can have 14, 15, or 94. I don't care which one, just let me know which one you're in when you come back."

And that was that, at least I thought it was. Still laughing at all the jocularity I had just encountered at the front desk, I got back in the truck, and literally drove around the corner, saw space 15 was under a nice cottonwood tree for shade, and backed the rig into place. Space 15 was not only easy to find, and partially shaded, but lay about 30 feet from the laundry facility. To our great fortune, they let us in early, gave us a great spot, and we wouldn't have to carry the laundered clothes half way across the camp. But the best was yet to come.

When we got back to the front desk with the check book to pay for space 15, Concetta got to meet the 79-year-old camp host, Larry. Once again he rolled out the red carpet and took the next 15 minutes to explain every single nuance of everything it was possible to experience, see, and do around Cody, Wyoming. In the many minutes of his pep talk for seeing what the city of Cody had to offer, he kept stuffing brochures in our hands and doodling figures for what each item might cost. Larry was the most thorough host either of us had ever encountered. Now comes the truly great part.

Since our rig has become a veritable rolling mud ball, Concetta piped up as we were finishing our get-acquainted session and said, "Do you know where we can find a truck and RV wash in Cody?"

"No need," Larry said. "There's a couple of guys who come right here to the camp. They charge $2.00 a foot and do a very nice job."

"That's terrific," I said. "How do we contact them?"

"Again, no need," Larry replied. "They're working on a rig here this morning already. Let me give them a call and get you scheduled."

Forty minutes later while I was busily working on yesterday's blog and Concetta was doing laundry, two guys knocked at the door and asked if I was ready.

"Absolutely," I said, and they immediately went to work. They had their own truck and trailer with a large tank of soapy water, and before long the filthy, bug-splattered aluminum box had been scrubbed and re-scrubbed, rinsed, and been toweled dry. It turned out to be the best $70.00 we've spent this trip.

Our wash surprise was so very timely. We were beginning to feel a tad embarrassed when we would pull into a camp full of gleaming coaches that we just knew the owner had spent several hours each day spit-shinning. Usually camps will not let owners use any water at all to spruce up their rigs. So the owners can sometimes be seen taking a half pail of soapy water and a mountain of rags to do what they can. I regard that as simple lunacy.

If you want to do a good job on your RV, the best solution is to find a good long-haul trucker's giant truck wash. We have one in Reno that does a great job for about $40.00. The best one we ever saw was in New Mexico. They had a special moving wash machine that the operator would push along the side of the RV and the big rollers would scrub just like the rollers in your average car wash.

So, by 1:00 p.m. today we had washed the clothes, washed the RV, and planned to walk over to the Buffalo Bill Center for the afternoon. Everything was right with the world.

Cody was hit with a few minutes of rain this afternoon, but Concetta and I were inside being conducted on a tour of the Cody Center where we got to hear about Buffalo Bill, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Sacagawea, Frederick Remington, Charles Russell, and several more notables in American History over our hour-long walk around the Center. The whole complex is immense, containing five separate museums in one. There's the Plains Indian Museum, the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the Draper Natural History Museum.

This afternoon, when our tour was over, we did as much of the Art Museum as we could, and it was just fabulous. We also did portions of the Natural History Museum, and found it to be excellent. Tomorrow we're here in Cody all day and we plan to spend as much time in the Cody Center as our feet and tired backs will allow. Fortunately, the Center provides ample sitting room for us oldsters. I'm especially anxious to see the gun collection, but the Plains Indian Museum should be exciting as well.

If you've never been to Cody, Wyoming, you've really missed out. In addition to the Cody Center, they have one and two-hour river-rafting, off-roading, a history museum, a frontier town where they do gunfights in the streets, and a country and western performance that comes complete with a cowboy dinner. They also have a rodeo. And those are just things I happened to see brochures on today. When you get tired of all that nature stuff in Yellowstone, Cody is the place to come to have even more fun in the great outdoors. And when you venture onto the highways and byways of this wonderful country of ours, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.