Day 29 - Cody to Greybull, Wyoming - 52 Miles

Today was a day of fantastic opportunities, serendipitous discoveries, and one "you're kidding me" coincidence. First the coincidence, since it just happened. A little background: About twenty minutes ago Concetta brought it to my attention that when I plugged in the rig at the camp's electric power tree outside, nothing happened in the RV. In other words, the surge protector that we use that plugs into the tree was showing a green light, meaning all was well, but things were definitely not well. The surge protector set us back about $270 bucks, so when it appears to be broken, I'm not happy.

While I was out checking into what might be wrong, our across-the-street neighbor here in camp noticed me outside from the vantage point of his comfortable easy chair beneath a cool, spreading cottonwood tree. When he asked me what I was up to, I walked across the road to tell him my tale of woe.

Once my sob story was out of the way, and we both agreed there was nothing to be done except replace it, we fell to talking on a variety of subjects. I'm not sure how the topic of marriage surfaced, but I told him that I had been married 41 years and he told me that he was on his second wife, but had been married 27 years to the first one. And then he hit me with the bombshell that he had lived twenty-five years in the town of Yerington, Nevada, and then went on to tell me where he had been married back then. "Yup," he said, "I got married right there in that little white church in Genoa, and we had our reception in the Genoa town hall."

"That's pretty amazing," I told him. "We got married in Genoa, too. Not in the little church, but in the nearby restaurant and gathering place called "Sierra Shadows. It had a nice dining room and a big fireplace, and we got married right there in front of a glowing fire." He and I both shook our heads in amazement at the coincidence.

So, here we are in the middle of Wyoming, holed up in the tiny town of Greybull, at a stop that we hadn't planned on making since we were headed to Sheridan. And right across the road from us is a fellow Nevadan who got married in the same state, in the same town, and just four years distant from us. But then, that coincidence was but the curtain call for what has been an unbelievable day for me.

Anyway, next we'll take up the discussion of "fantastic opportunities." I have been a fanatical fan of most areas of history all my life. I've always taken photos of old cars, houses, and machinery, collected rusty mementos of once-upon-a-time historic sites and read incessantly on a variety of historical topics. When I was in the 7th grade, I was already a member of a Civil War round-table group that met once a month to hear invited speakers, and to do a show-and-tell of vintage weapons, uniforms, and other collectibles belonging to members, most of whom were a half century older than me.

About the age of 14, I was able to purchase, in a junk shop, an 1865 Enfield (British) rifle that, owing to its age, may or may not have been used in our Civil War. The rifle was basically not serviceable and had not enjoyed the best of care throughout its life. Still, I loved that heavy old gun and own it to this day. Once in a while I even hang it over the fireplace where it looks totally cool!

As you might guess at this point, my dream starting in the 7th grade, when I would attend those Civil War round-table meetings and get to gaze upon all the lovely antique weapons, was to someday shoot such weapons, or at least the faithful reproductions of those wonderful old guns.

Over the years, that desire to shoot antique weapons has never left me. Occasionally, we have come across a weapons demonstration, in perhaps a living history setting, while on one of our RV trips, and then the desire would be rekindled. But until today, the timing never seemed to be right to step up hold the weapon myself.

But then, while checking in at the Ponderosa RV park in Cody, Wyoming, my attention accidentally wandered over to the "things to do in Cody" pamphlet rack while I was waiting for the desk clerk to check us into the camp. There, in living color and bold print, was a pamphlet that proclaimed in large red and yellow letters, "SHOOT GUNS."

Naturally I grabbed a copy and opened it up. My eyes got very big, I'm sure, when I noticed that you could shoot nearly any and every type of historic gun, from flintlocks to machine guns, and from old west pistols, to Winchester repeating rifles. I wasn't sure that Concetta would be supportive of such an endeavor, though the cost didn't seem to be out of the question. I put two of the pamphlets into my back pocket. I didn't say anything to Concetta, but I intended to keep the place on the "back burner" of my memory. Maybe a trip to the gun shop could be in the cards for me sometime during our stay.

As you know, if you've been reading the blog, we've stayed very, very busy since we arrived in Cody. But today we intended to hit the road after filling the tank and buying some groceries. As we were getting ready to leave, I broached the subject of shooting antique guns to Concetta before we got on to more mundane activities.

To my great joy, she not only didn't mind but really seemed to think it was a great idea and a great photo op as well. The gun shooting business was just a couple miles west of us, and we made it in just a few minutes. When we walked in, we found that only one other customer was ahead of us. The owner personally took us under his wing, introduced us to our choices of weapons, and gave us a bit of history on each.

After hearing what he had to say, I told him my choices were the large-bore, flintlock musket identical to the ones that Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery had taken with them on their two-year sojourn into the vast, uncharted wilderness of President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. I had the option of choosing a Kentucky long rifle, lighter and of smaller caliber, but I stuck with the larger musket. For my second choice, I hearkened back to my 1865 Enfield that I had purchased as a fourteen-year-old and I chose the 1861 cap and ball rifle, identical to those used by the Union army in the Civil War.

With the really old stuff out of the way, the weapons that I had wanted to shoot for a lifetime, I arrived at my third choice. For this one, I can only say that all those black and white westerns of my youth, like the legendary films of Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, influenced my final choice, that of the 1873 Winchester repeating rifle. Indeed, Jimmy Stewart had actually starred in the movie called, "Winchester 73."

So there you have it. They proceeded to give me ear and eye protection, run me through a litany of rules and regulations, and then a bright and perky young redhead escorted me to the firing range. I'm sure my pulse was pounding by this time. Was it really and finally going to happen?

Well, not at first. Try as she might, Jo, my shooting "coach" could not get the Lewis and Clark gun to fire. She started by putting the wadding and a ball at the top of the barrel, then ramrodded it down. Then she checked the flint to make sure it was tight in the frizzen. After that she added powder to the pan, then closed the pan cover. Finally, she moved the hammer to the half-cocked position. "Okay," Jo said. Keep your finger off the trigger until you sight on the target. When you're ready, pull the hammer to full cock, then fire.

Even though we seemed to do everything right, when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened but a "flash in the pan." At that point I would lower the weapon, and Jo would set about cleaning the touch hole. After doing that about four times, Jo suggested I move to the Kentucky long rifle, and perhaps the boss would have to deal with the Lewis and Clark gun himself. I was disappointed, but at least I'd been able to hold the darn thing to see how heavy it was.

Jo and I went on to repeat the process with the Kentucky long rifle, a gun that our colonists would have used, as well as soldiers during our revolution. This time things went much better, and I took my very first black-powder shot. About this time the boss came back with the big-bore Lewis and Clark gun and told us it was working now. The gun still had the original ball in the barrel, so all we had to do was pick it up and fire it. That I did with great glee, and I pulled the trigger and sent the ball down range and into the target, missing the bulls eye by just a half inch or so.

Since the Lewis and Clark gun was probably going to continue to cause us minor problems, at that point I elected to finish the flintlock session with the Kentucky rifle. I then was allowed to fire three more shots with that gun, and managed to keep the bullets very near the two I had already fired.

The funny thing about shooting these guns was that I couldn't really see the sights, since I forgotten to bring my "up close" glasses. But since my whole idea was merely to experience shooting the antique weapons, I really didn't care where the bullets went. This makes it all the more remarkable that I was able to shoot all five flintlock bullets into, or very near to, the center of the middle target.

My next weapon was the 1861 Springfield, the gun that helped win the Civil War for the Union. This is the one that I had hoped to shoot from the time I was 13 years old. The gun was not too heavy, and the wood was as silky as a baby's bottom. My heart was indeed beating faster now. Jo loaded the Springfield with the proper Minie ball, put a mercury cap (or whatever they use nowadays) on the nipple, and then turned it over to me. After that, I proceeded to put all five shots within a four-inch circle and right around the uppermost red target, though I hadn't necessarily been shooting at that one. I just made each shot like the previous one, and all ended up in the same place. Once again I could not see the sights of the rifle, only the target 50 feet away was in focus.

For my final weapon, Jo selected the Winchester 73 and dry-fired it once to show me the safety feature and the action. At this point, I decided to just have fun and not worry whether I hit anything or not. I got to shoot ten shots this time and I wanted to rack that lever just like Jimmy Stewart did as he picked off the bad guys in his famous movie. I ended up putting seven of the shots into the right-hand target in a four-inch circle, though none in the red. Two others went more afield and mingled with the Springfield's spread of hits. The last one must have gone through one of the massive holes left by the two flintlocks, or missed the target altogether as it left no trace.

To say I was walking on air is off by four miles. I had FINALLY fulfilled one of my childhood -- and adult -- dreams, and had fired virtually ALL the weapons I ever wanted to shoot. PLUS, since my first-choice flintlock had proven problematic, I had actually gotten to fire FOUR weapons for the price of three. Damn! Life is good!

Before leaving Cody, a town which for a huge variety of reasons, has been our very favorite stop on this trip, we tarried briefly for gas and groceries, took a look at the map, then set our course east for the town of Sheridan and, we hoped, more adventures to come. Little did we know that we would not make Sheridan, but would once again be pulled off the highway and into a new adventure, AND a visit with my past.

We didn't get too far out of Cody before we came across the perfect lunch spot, high on a bluff overlooking, well, it seemed like we were overlooking about ALL of Wyoming. But I believe it was the Bighorn Basin. It turned out to be the perfect spot to appreciate the high-desert countryside, the magnificent cliffs to our west, and voluminous clouds that seemed to be portending rain in the future but just looked beautiful in the present. (You can see the photos at the top of this blog entry.)

After lunch, we jumped back on Route 14 toward Sheridan, and we actually made a few miles. But somewhere between the tiny town of Emblem -- population 10 -- and the larger village to the east called Greybull, we came across the last of the three events today that I alluded to in the opening paragraph, that of the serendipitous discovery.

You may or may not know that from October of 1969 to July of 1972, I served my country in the U.S. Naval Air Corps and was stationed on a tiny airbase in Illinois called NAS Glenview. Throughout much of my enlistment I was a Naval airman, and flew as a crewman aboard some 1940s-vintage aircraft, most of which were used along American's coastlines to search for enemy, mostly Soviet, submarines. While my enlistment in Illinois precluded my searching for Russian subs, we still used the same airplanes for training purposes for our Navy reserve pilots. Consequently, I spent a few hours each month of my enlistment flying largely as an observer, as we flew out over Lake Michigan and even north into Wisconsin.

Today, as we motored east toward Sheridan, imagine my surprise as we came upon an unusual sight for the middle of Wyoming. There, as we rolled along Route 14, I could see the familiar nose and tail assembly of the Neptune P2V-7, complete with U.S. Navy markings, getting closer and finally showing up very near a road sign that announced a roadside rest was at hand.

Without a second thought, I moved the rig into the turn lane, entered the roadside rest parking lot, and pulled in next to an idling 18-wheeler. Turning off the engine, I said to Concetta, "There's no way I'm passing this one up. I've been trying to get close to one of these to take photos, and perhaps get a tour of the interior, for decades."

Concetta agreed, and said that she didn't have a problem with stopping. So, off we went to tour the air museum which lay at the back of the rest stop and contained a small variety of ancient military aircraft, later used for firefighting duty. I was having a hard time believing that these unrelated events were happening in a single day of my life. I was finally in the right place, at the right time, to get up close and personal with an important and indelible part of my youth. The Neptune was just a few hundred steps away. The sky was bright blue, perfect for shooting white and silver airplanes, and attendance looked minuscule, so no one would get in the way of my shooting.

Concetta and I wandered back and forth across the weedy ground, looking at the planes from every side, trying to get the best camera angle. The only thing I can complain about is that the staff would not let me go aboard. I truly ached to go and sit in the waist or the nose, places in the plane I used to ride. The plexiglass nose was the most exciting. Once airborne, sitting in the glass nose was the next best thing to flying without visible means of support. You felt suspended in mid air, floating, as the clouds whipped by, and the intermittent patches of blue sky appeared and disappeared at random.

I asked again once we got back to the ticket office, but the museum docent just shook his head. Nope, he wasn't letting me get aboard. Maybe someday when I come back. "Oh, well, maybe someday I'll come back and stuff money in your hand until you let me go aboard," I said.

The docent just smiled, and we ended up just buying a t-shirt with a Neptune firefighting plane on it, and a decal of the same description to complete our visit. I hated to leave and not see the inside of the plane, but I'm going to keep my eye out for another air museum. Somewhere, somehow, someone will let me get onboard, and THAT will be another dream come true.

And when you set out to find your past, create a new one, or just hit the road to explore this country, from coast to coast, or border to border, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.