Why I Love Wyoming

I’m now done with my time in Wyoming – I’ll be in Montana for the rest of the tour (minus an unbooked week in Seattle and Thanksgiving in California) – but I wanted to pay tribute to the state I’ve called home for three weeks. This state is great and now I’m going to tell you why.

The Tetons

On Friday, I drove from Jackson to Cody, WY. I had to drive through Yellowstone again (yes, had to) and I saw a whole bunch of elk!!! I might not have seen them at the Elk Refuge, but I did get to see them. I couldn’t get any pictures because I was driving, but I did pull over to get a picture of sunrise in the Tetons, which was pretty spectacular. I got to see parts of Yellowstone that I hadn’t seen before as well and even though it was rainy, it was beautiful. I listened to more of Gulliver’s Travels – if you read my blog religiously, you know that I was listening to it on my drive to Idaho but apparently the first version I downloaded only had the first two parts (there are four) so when I said got most of the way through the book on my drive to Driggs, I apparently only got through most of half of the book. After yesterday, I am much, much closer to finishing the whole book!

Yay birthday!

Once I got to Cody, I did show laundry. I know that there won’t be a lot to do in Bridger, MT (my next residency) but I wanted to get the laundry done sooner rather than later (except I still need to do the sorting… oops). Even after laundry, it was still too early to check into my hotel, so I walked down the street to the Buffalo Jump Winery. Yes, people make wine in Wyoming! I went in for a tasting and got talking with the lady behind the bar who had been to Bridger and could confirm my suspicions that there isn’t much there – not even a lot of people, 500 by her estimation (728 according to the 2010 census). I ended up buying myself a bottle to prepare for my birthday this coming week! 24 on “Thomson-Crush-Tuesday” for all you social media butterflies who need a new hashtag.

After wine, it was still too early to check into my hotel, so I decided I would walk around downtown Cody. Cody isn’t actually very big, it’s just known for Buffalo Bill, which means it’s very touristy. I didn’t go to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West but I found something even better! As I walked around downtown Cody, I found the Cody Dug Up Gun Museum. That’s right! The people of the great state of Wyoming have a museum dedicated to antique guns that people have dug up. This state has no sense of irony – it’s incredible!

Dead.

The museum was actually neat. There were also some pictures to go along with the guns and I really like this one – not the picture so much, the caption, it says he wears his belt buckle “proudly.” Ummmm… he can’t be proud, he’s dead. 

After the museum, I went looking for postcards. They weren’t hard to find – like I said, this is a tourist town. Harder to find, however, was someone to check me out of the store once I had found the perfect postcard… but while I was waiting, I witnessed a 10 year old buy his first hunting knife and heard “Wide Open Spaces”… like I said, this state has no sense of irony and doesn’t give a damn, hence my extreme love for it.

After all that, I was finally able to check into my hotel which “had wifi” but didn’t actually have wifi that worked. My dad helped me with dinner by using his perfectly good wifi in Cohasset to order me a pizza (and a surprise brownie as well!). He’s nice like that.

It’s a good thing that I did my sight-seeing on Friday because it rained on yesterday. I started the day off with yoga and it was lovely! Not only was it cheap, but it was a very simple practice and I really like going back to basics every now and then. I definitely got a work out but it didn’t feel like work (see what I did there?).

After yoga, I ate leftover pizza and sorted my personal laundry (that I did at the same time as the show laundry that I still haven’t touched). I decided I would check out the Buffalo Bill Center of the West but when I got there, I decided that I wouldn’t. Sorry Bill, but I don’t have $20 for you.

To escape the rain, I went to see The Intern. I love Anne Hathaway (maybe not as much as I love Wyoming – it’s hard to top that) but this movie was not the greatest. It was – no offense parents who wish to see it – an old person movie. I was probably the youngest person there – definitely the youngest person who went there alone.

After the movie, I went looking for a ginger ale because I wasn’t feeling great but apparently that stuff is incredibly hard to find and I never did get one. In a world where you can literally get a combination of 500 different flavors from a singular soda machine, you can’t find a can of ginger ale at a gas station, grocery store or hotel lobby… I did, however, finish off the last of the pizza for dinner!

Now on to that “show laundry that I haven’t touched.” Well, I touched it. If someone could explain to me why I decided to sort it in my hotel room by myself, I would appreciate it. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. It’s like letting the cat out of the bag or the genie out of the bottle – it’s an all or nothing operation. I wrote most of this blog post before I had the misfortune of a thought that led me to unloading 60+ kids worth of costumes in a room meant for one and I didn’t feel like editing those other parts (especially because I felt they were well written).