| Driving
through the wide open spaces of the eastern part of
the state, then across the Bighorn Mountains, Peter
Thody falls for Wyoming in a big way. Cody serves up
some Wild West history, gunfights and a rodeo, but it
is the beauty of Yellowstone, America's first and best-loved
national park, that takes his breath away. |
Back road purists might disapprove, but there
are times when to follow anything other than the interstate
would be contrary. Check a map of northeast Wyoming and
you'll see that virtually all those tempting red and yellow
roads run either north-south or diagonally. If you're heading
west across this section of the Cowboy State, the only lateral
route is the thick blue line of Interstate 90.
This is no six-lane highway, though, and there's
certainly no sense of being on the longest interstate of
them all - 3,099 miles, stretching all the way from Seattle,
Wash., to Boston, Mass. For the most part, it feels like
just another two-laner, albeit with a parallel one running
in the opposite direction just over the median.
There is next to no traffic, so it's easy to
sit back and enjoy the wide open expanses of the least populated
state (there are just 522,830 Wyomingites - more people
live in Washington, D.C.). In a landscape of sage and grass
on gently rolling hills, the views are immense; it's hard
to imagine the skies of "Big Sky" Montana, just
60 miles to the north, being any bigger. In many places,
the only thing between us and the distant horizon is a sea
of waving grass.
Ah, yes, the distant horizon. Just what was
that bump on the horizon we saw a few miles back? As movie
buffs, UFO conspiracists and anyone whose commitment to
planning and map-reading extends beyond spotting a blue
line will already have worked out, that "bump"
was Devils
Tower National Monument - the 1,267-foot-high extinct
volcano that is a central feature of Steven Spielberg's
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
A brief diversion onto State Highway 14 would
admittedly have delivered a more satisfactory view but,
to be perfectly honest, such is the joy of driving through
the high desert that it doesn't really matter. The skies
are virtually cloudless, the heat is intense and the scenery
is, well, I can't think of a better word than "Western."
We rise and fall with the swell of the hills and valleys;
we see real cowboys on real horses herding real cattle;
and we pass communities surrounded by rusting trucks arranged
like pioneer wagons circled in anticipation of an Indian
attack. It's a day of deep pleasure and enjoyment.
After overnighting at the WyoMotel
in Buffalo, a picture-perfect motel complete with open-air
swimming pool, we continue west, this time on State Highway
16 - or "Sweet 16" as the local tourist leaflets
claim it's known. The road takes us through the southern
end of Bighorn
National Forest, past midsummer snowdrifts as we climb
up through the Bighorn Mountains and down through the spectacular
Ten Sleep Canyon, a magnet for rock climbers.
At the town of Ten
Sleep itself, so named by Sioux Indians because it lies
10 sleeps from their main winter camps, we stop for coffee
at a store-cum-diner. It's the kind of place where, instead
of notices about yard sales and PTA meetings, they have
leaflets illustrating the different silhouettes of black
bears and grizzlies so you'll know which one to shoot (grizzlies,
an endangered species, have a distinctive hump at the shoulder).
Our presence is noted by an old guy who has
the look of someone who comes in every day to drink coffee
and make conversation with whoever else happens to be here.
Sure enough, he looks over and nods. "How you guys
doin'?" he asks. "Great, thanks," I reply.
"And you?" "Happier than a Minnesota deer
hunter," he assures us, following up this news with
a quiet laugh that puts a smile on the face of everyone
else in the room. Satisfied that we've been made welcome,
he goes back to his coffee and leaves us to ours.
We reach the city of Cody in time for lunch
and, after checking into the Econo
Lodge Moose Creek, find ourselves a table outside the
Silver
Dollar Bar, order beer and burgers, and sit back to
watch the world go by. In these parts, what's likely to
go by is either a thumping V-twin Harley or a burbling V8
pickup, so the sound actually becomes a physical sensation,
like sitting so close to a bass speaker that you can feel
it.
Cody was named after William "Buffalo
Bill" Cody and it wears its history with pride. The
hotel that this soldier/hunter/showman built and named after
his daughter, the Irma
Hotel, remains a focal point of the town, and shootouts
are staged outside, six nights a week, throughout the summer.
Just down the road is the Buffalo
Bill Historical Center where, like us, you should ignore
the fairly unambitious advertising - "The Best Hour
You'll Spend in the West" - and spend a full afternoon
- or longer - exploring the Buffalo Bill collections, Plains
Indian artifacts, Western art, stuffed animals and historical
firearms that are housed within what are actually five museums
all under one roof.
In the evening we visit the Cody
Nite Rodeo to drink Coke, eat popcorn and watch young
men tread the fine line between success and quadriplegia
for our entertainment. The idea is to hang onto the bull
for eight seconds and earn points for riding it with as
much panache as possible. Many riders fall off, at which
point a bull-fighter (commonly known as a rodeo clown) jumps
into the ring and does his best to divert the enraged beast's
attention while our fallen hero makes his escape. Occasionally
this doesn't go to plan and the rider is either gored or
trampled.
The next day we're up bright and early, more
than a little excited about the prospect of our first visit
to Yellowstone
National Park. With all due respect to Cody and its
many attractions, the reason we're here is for its proximity
to the park, 53 miles to the west. While some might wonder
where else in the world a round trip in excess of 100 miles
would be considered convenient, much of the drive is through
a spectacularly rugged canyon carved from volcanic rock
by the Shoshone River. Theodore Roosevelt called it "the
most scenic 50 miles in the U.S.," and while this is
possibly a claim too far, it's certainly a drive with few
equals.
As for Yellowstone itself, well … I hesitate
to use absolutes - you never know what you'll come across
tomorrow - but my immediate impression was that this was
the most achingly beautiful place I'd ever seen, and nothing
I've seen since has given me cause to think differently.
From the flower-filled meadows (where a coyote
poses for pictures), through the lush green forests that
fill in the spaces left by fires in 2003, to the almost
unnatural blue of Yellowstone
Lake, this is a place where there are no dull bits to
endure between each natural jewel. Everything about it is
magical.
On the first day, we marvel at the beauty of
the iridescent hydrothermal pools of West
Thumb Geyser Basin and join the crowds to ooh and aah
as Old
Faithful does its stuff. On the second day, we visit
the Grand
Canyon of the Yellowstone with its spectacular Upper
and Lower Falls, watch a herd of buffalo lazing and grazing
in the meadows of Hayden Valley, and take a boardwalk trail
past the bubbling mudpots of Mud Volcano. At every step
of the way, there are forests, rivers, valleys and views
that anywhere else would be considered world-class attractions
in their own right. It really is a wonderful place.
It's also almost inconceivably large: over
2 million acres, in fact. The roads within the park are
arranged like a figure eight. Our two days of touring take
us to a handful of highlights on a section of the lower
loop and, in common with more than 99 percent of visitors,
no more than a few hundred yards from the road.
Travel writer Tim Cahill lives 50 miles from
the park and has been "puttering" around it for
a quarter of a century. In his book "Lost
in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone Park,"
he tells of a waterfall that remains unnamed, unmapped and
therefore largely unknown within half a mile - just a few
hundred yards - of Yellowstone Lake. That sections of the
world's first national park should remain virtually undiscovered
in this world of GPS and Google Earth strikes me as incredible
and, at the same time, hugely reassuring.
Peter
Thody
10/31/08
