We woke up at 7:00am in an almost zombie-like state from the deep sleep we had in the comfortable Antlers Inn bed. I got coffee going, then began working at finishing blog entries. This process takes what I have written and revised while Shar drives, copy and paste into Blogger, then add pictures from my phone. Adding pictures requires wifi, because of the massive amount of data I’ve found it takes. After sharing the link on Facebook, we send the link to friends and relatives via text message. 
While I worked on the blog, Shar planned our final visit to Yellowstone. You cannot fathom the beauty and size of Yellowstone until you get a chance to explore it for a day. Just driving the figure eight looped roads of the park would take you at least six to seven hours, not including stops for sightseeing. We had determined our “must sees” the night before and she added a “hopefully sees” stop as well. She did great on estimating the time it would take to get from the centrally located Canyon Village area, and we were packed up and rolling by 9:15am.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is just fantastic. Rich colors, great overlooks, but I wouldn’t want to visit during the weekend. We literally waited in line to park. My acrophobia went off the charts when I saw a 10ish year old boy standing way to close to and unprotected edge, and I couldn’t recover enough to even hold my phone near the well fortified, completely safe, rock encircled edge of the overlooks for pictures. Luckily, Shar doesn’t have such mental issues.
Our next stop was the Artist’s Paintpots area. An awesome geyser, several beautiful pools, and bubbling mud, makes up this acre of land accessible by a 1.2 mile loop walk. This area gets its name from the myriad of colors you see from the top of the hill looking down. While we were standing on the boardwalk one of the dinner plate sized chimneys began to hiss.
Our “hopefully see” section of the park, the Mammoth Hot Springs area, will have to wait for another trip. We found a nice picnic area on the road leading to the East Entrance, continued to eat our sharp cheddar cheese brick, the log of theringer, and an apple, then drove the two hours back to Cody. The Shoshone River gorge between Cody and Yellowstone is gorgeous in its own right, with several campgrounds along the Sheshone Reservoir edge. The Buffalo Bill Dam is open as a tourist stop as well, and there is even a ski area that has zip lines during the summer (Sleeping Giant Zip Lines). 
We rolled into Cody at 5:45pm hungry for some bbq and found a food truck serving just that. We ordered and Shar was getting our sodas while I bent down to take a selfie with the metal pig they had sitting out front. A passing lady named Patty, whom we later found out was from Rogue River, commented on the phone and we got into a conversation. We found out that a show just up the street was going to have a gun fight vignette! We got our order of a stuffed pulled pork and brisket potato for Shar, my rib, brisket and slaw dinner, and walk crossed the street to watch the show. We paid the $4 for the right to sit in metal folding chairs and happily ate while we watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid joke, argue and then have a shootout with Virgil and Wyatt Earp. Etta Place, the Kid’s wife, and Cattle Kate provided comedic support as well. A rodeo clown from Oregon played a huge game of Heads or Tails with the kids willing to go out front. The winning girl received a free ticket to that night’s rodeo. The amusing show lasted 30 minutes and we were back on the road.
For an hour and fifteen minutes we drove through two small towns and started looking for a place to park for the night at 7:45pm. After three possibles, we took a left turn and drove up onto the top of a plateau with a great view of the valley. A solitary truck drove by as we were relaxing, containing a young man heading to parts unknown. By 9:20pm we had to retreat to the car because of mosquitoes. Luckily the wind picked up an hour later and their attacks ceased. We’ll be looking for some kind of screening very soon.
Milage Driven: 282
City/Towns Passed: Cody, Emblem, Greybull, Manderson
Temperature at 10am: 73
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