Day 3: Cody, here we come!!!!

The drive from Thermopalis to Cody was quite exciting. Once again Scott did his homework on the internet and had found an abandoned ghost town called Kirwin in the mountains outside of a town called Meeteese. It was an adventure all in itself. It began as a mild paved road that wound through a beautiful field where we saw our first buffalo and antelope; however, it did not stay that way for long. It soon became a gravel road that began winding its way through trees forests and up the mountain side. It was definitely made for a 4 wheel drive vehicle because this gravel road soon began to switchback and eventually caused us to have to cross a river. No, really, we had to drive through water that went up to the hubcaps of our vehicle. TWICE!! It was very exciting. Two hours later we found the abandoned town. Apparently it was mining town but was abandoned after a huge snow storm had come through and caused the people a great deal of problems. It was so neat. We then returned over the river and through the woods (Literally) to Meeteese where we bought homemade chocolates from a cowboy chocolatier.
We arrived in Cody around 4:00 that after noon. It is the coolest little town I have ever seen. I told Scott I am ready to move there whenever he would like. Anyway, we checked into our hotel and went immediately to the stadium where we picked up our tickets for the Annual Cody Stampede. (It is a pretty major rhodeo.) Upon returning to the town, we went to the Hotel Irma. This was the hotel owned by Buffalo Bill. It was pretty incredible, but I must admit that we went there on a mission. See, we are Amazing Race watchers and two seasons ago the during the Family Amazing Race, they had to go Irma and have an old time photo taken. I wanted to do that. So. . . we did. I saved up my change for a year and was able to get a couple of old time photos for our family wall. It's funny because Torii was relucatant to do it at first but by the time we were finished she was quite disappointed it was over. She and Harper both really enjoyed dressing up and wearing the pretty hats.
Once we were done with this. We went off to a little craft fair they had going on. It was neat to see how many different things people could do with antlers. We are definitely in the west. I will have you know there was not one picture of a palm tree or one carving of aligator. Go figure. The girls were able to purchase their first rings and Harper was able to find a small pair of earrings of a moose. They are really cute. After this, we caught a quick dinner and then we were off to the Stampede.
We arrived at the Stampede, along with everyone else from Cody and found out it was pink night. Apparently, it was breast cancer awareness night and they were selling pink bandanas for breast cancer research, and if you bought one then you could have Peekaboo Street, the gold medal skier autograph them for you. So of course we did. The girls even got there picuture taken with her. We then walked around a bit, the girls were able to get into a clown barrel and finally each of them paid $5 to ride a mechanical bull for 2 minutes. Yes, I am serious. First Harper decided she wanted to do it and then Torii saw that Harper could do it, so she did it as well. They did great. They both stayed on the whole time and were quite proud of themselves at the end. I was blown away. We have it on tape for any one who would like to see. After this we went and sat down and watched the rhodeo. It really was interesting to watch, but it did not start until 8:00 and by 10 it was still not half way over, so we left and went to bed. We wanted to be refreshed for our next adventure. YELLOWSTONE!!!!!!!!