Day 10

Good morning, world!

Yep, this was our backyard for the day!

It rained a good bit during the night.  Temperatures got down to 33 degrees inside the tipi.  I’d left my camera out on the picnic table and it was frozen to the table.  The dogs got really cold.  I let Emily in my sleeping bag for most of the night and let Buddy have the all the layers of towels and blankets since nobody would let him in their bag.

Pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  The stove was a pain that morning.  

Jeremiah ended up dumping the coals out and I finished frying pancakes over that.  It was kind of nice because I stayed warm too.  The stove forces all the heat up, which is perfect most of the time.  We boiled 3 kettles of water for tea and greasy dishes. 

We met Butch, a general contractor, dog trainer, and knife smith, from Riverton, WY.  He, his wife, and yellow lab had been living in their camper for 2 years since they sold the last house they built.  They were really happy with their life and talked of building another house soon.  They’d been elk hunting the day before.  

Emily smoking a pipe.  Looks like an elk leg.

Not sure what this bird is ... anybody know?

We packed up the tent wet and had cold cuts for lunch.  I’d brought a lot of sandwich meat from the house and was anxious to get it all eaten before it started to spoil.  Some hamburger juice and ketchup had leaked in one of the coolers.  I took advantage of the 35 degrees and drug everything out of the coolers, washed the food and the coolers, and reorganized everything as I loaded it back in.  

We headed to Cody, WY.  We took highway 16 to CR 47 (there lots of desert right around Tensleep and some really cool houses before Tensleep) up to 31 through Manderson, Greybull (pronounced Grable by Butch), 14 through Emblem (population 10).  

Old Stockyards outside of Greybull

Coming into Cody, WY

We stopped at the visitor center in Cody asked about hotels and stores in town.  I reserved a room at Carter Mountain Motel, dogs and all.  When we attempted to head that direction, the car battery was dead.  Again.  The visitor center closed and not much of anyone around.  Jeremiah decided to try to jump it with a 12 volt gel cell he’d stashed under the seat.  And it worked!  The goofy grins the boys gave each other when it started were pretty funny.  Kinda like they’d just found out how to open a locked cookie jar.  :)

Carter Mountain was a nice motel, which lovely old quilts on the beds.  Very clean and comfortable!

Joshua and I went to Walmart for our regular grocery run and some stuff for dinner.  I forgot to print pictures which had been the whole reason I was so excited to get to Cody!  We had fish sticks, microwaved sweet potatoes and salad for dinner.  I spent the evening catching up on blogging.  You take Mom with a migraine, and 3 internet deprived kids and you get a late night.