Day 46: Rodeo « Data On The Move

Location: Cody, WY

We woke up this morning to the nice blazing sun beating down on us, which wasn’t exactly pleasant. We spent a few grouchy moments collecting ourselves before deciding to book a site with more shade for tonight. Then, we went for a morning swim, which was quite refreshing. Apparently, one of the employees here has the last name Mickelson, which was cool, and she recommended a place for us to go for breakfast – Granny’s Restaurant. We had pancakes, French toast, eggs, hash browns and oatmeal for roughly $15, all of which were good. We then set out to find dog food for Data. After trying two veterinary hospitals and a feed store, we found The Barn, which carried a very large selection of Science Diet. They did carry Data’s food, but they were sold out of all except one 4.5 pound bag of it, so we had to settle for that. It should be enough to get us through to Jackson, which was the big concern. We made another stop at Rocky Mountain Sports, where I bought a windproof and waterproof lighter, something I’d been thinking of getting for a while. (Unfortunately, the lighter doesn’t seem to work very well, so we will have to return it tomorrow.) We then came back to the campground for a few minutes before heading to Cedar Mountain Trail Rides for an hour-long horseback ride up a mountain.

We left Data in the car with all the windows open, since the sun had been obscured by clouds and the area wasn’t sketchy in any way. The owners of the company have two dogs that hang around and they said Data could just play with them, but since Data has never really gotten up close to a horse before, we decided it was best to let him stay in the car. The ride was quite nice. It was the two of us, a cowboy guide and a middle-aged couple. Despite having told one of the employees that Julia has had a lot of horseback experience and I have had some, but not much, I seem to have been given the most difficult horse to ride out of the group, Morgan. Early in the ride, he was spooked by a rabbit and began to take off briefly. The rest of the ride, he seemed to want to break into a run at all times. The older man in the group rode a horse named Dudley, whose personality fits his name. He would slowly mosey up the mountain, stopping frequently. The older woman rode a horse named Ranger who tried twice to scrape her off his back on a tree, then used said tree to scratch his ass. Needless to say, we both had a lot of fun, although there wasn’t enough time on the one hour tour to go high enough to get a truly spectacular view.

After the ride, we stopped back at the campground to shower, since we were both covered in trail dust. We then had an early dinner at La Comida, which did a pretty good job of breaking our streak of bad luck with Mexican food, before seeing the Cody Gunfighters put on a free show at 6 p.m. The show was fun, but considering they perform six days a week for three months or so, I would have expected things to seem more streamlined. Afterwards, we went to the Cody Night Rodeo.

Neither of us had been to a rodeo before, so we didn’t exactly know what to expect. At the ticket booth, I asked one of the women where I should be for the best photo-opportunities. Within a few minutes, the director of the show was escorting us to our own gated photography area directly adjacent to the competitor’s area, on ground level. I could hardly have asked for a better place to be. I could, however, have asked for a daytime show. Since the sun had already mostly gone down by the time the show got moving, I wasn’t able to shoot exactly how I would have wanted. (Dorky translation: I wasn’t able to use my 2x extender since f/5.6 would be too slow, I had to shoot ISO 1600 and 3200 and even then I couldn’t have a shutter speed faster than 1/250, which is way too slow to effectively shoot something like this.) Regardless, we had a lot of fun. There were some highly entertaining kids running around before the start of the show slapping and harassing the calves, all of the people we talked to were very nice and the show itself had a lot of good variety and action. The rodeo had been running every night in June, July and August, but tonight was the last night before the three-day finals take place, so things were winding down. As a result, there wasn’t a very big crowd and the announcers had to really try (too hard) to get people involved sometimes.

It’s interesting to see a completely different culture, not just a hobby. The kids weren’t just fooling around at a rodeo, they were genuine cowboys-in-training. It’s hard for me to think of a comparable tradition back in Connecticut, unless being spoiled rich white kids counts (there are plenty of them). After the rodeo we spoke to a number of people, all of whom were very nice and made us feel right at home.

When we got back to the campground, we quickly set up the tent and got a campfire going (our first of the trip, largely due to extremely dry conditions elsewhere resulting in fire bans), which we used to make s’mores. Now, Julia has just gone to bed and I am about to do the same. Tomorrow, we head for Yellowstone! For real, this time.

Of course, I have photos from today. Click “there’s more to this” to see them all.

Cowboy Kid

One of the three children we saw at the rodeo. I don’t know this kid’s dad, but I can just imagine that he’s already well on his way to being just like him. Julia and I on Horseback