Leaving the Bighorns and heading to Cody

When we went up to the Bighorns, we weren't sure what we'd do once we got there or how many days we'd stay. If more of the area had been thawed out and was open to hikers, we would have stayed longer. Conditions being what they were this year, we finished looking at everything we wanted to in three days.

rolling meadows of the Bighorns

coming down on 14A, it was hazy but beautiful

Thursday morning we packed up tent and headed back to Lovell. We stopped to visit with Aunt Bessie (Dode's Grandma Dickson's sister). We'd told her we'd be coming through on Friday but there's no cell reception in the mountains so we had no way to let her know we'd be there a day early. It sounds like if we would have come down on Friday, we would have encountered some relatives from our neck of the woods who were coming into town for a funeral. She was very gracious and even had lunch ready for us. By coming a day early, we missed the calf branding. The boys would have enjoyed watching but I think Elizabeth might have had a hard time. When she went out to the bees, she was concerned that a few died as the frames were being put back in the hive.

Aunt Bessie showed us the honey house where they extract the honey from the frames and where they store the boxes they put on the hives (called supers). Her son, Von Zeller, took us out to the hives where we donned bee veils and got an up close look at what goes on inside the hives. The kids were able to see a queen as well as the development of a bee from egg to juvenile bee. Eizabeth was pretty concerned about being so close to the bees and had to go out to the van and come back a few times. Isaac Colson stood and watched with his epi pen at the ready.

out at the bee yard

ready to go in with the bees, wearing just a bee veil

Von didn't even wear any protective gear!

smoking a frame so he could show the kids

Von ended up with two stings

He's been working with the bees since he was a child

Aunt Bessie made us a tasty lunch of sloppy joe sandwiches and we enjoyed visiting with her at her house. I bet things seemed a lot more quiet and calm when we left! We stopped back at the candy factory to buy some truffles and honeymoons (and pick up things we'd left behind at Gene & Ginny's). We also purchased a copy of the Lovell Chronicle since their was a photo of Anastaya finishing the fun run in the paper.

We headed off for Cody, Wy, where we hoped to find a camping spot for the next two nights. We were making up plans as we went along and it wasn't a comfortable feeling to know we had to find a spot somewhere for our party of eight to camp for the next two nights. The kids aren't very flexible when it comes to explaining why we can't camp where we said we were going to. They don't find it an adventure to drive around looking for a site, and neither do I! Fortunately, there was lots of room at Buffalo Bill State Park. I gave a sigh of relief once we were set up in our new site. To get to our campground, you have to drive through three tunnels. The last and longest one is ¾ mile long. The kids always make a game of trying to hold their breath in a tunnel. So far, no one has managed to make it through the long one!

After setting up, we drove down to the visitor center for the Buffalo Bill Dam. When it was built in 1910, it was the tallest dam in the world. It is a concrete dam with no steel reinforcement, they just scattered granite boulders between each layer of concrete. It goes through a very narrow canyon. It was impressive to watch the water roaring out of the spillway. We're here in flood season and there is a lot of water going around the dam. We could feel the floor of the visitor center vibrating beneath us because of the water.

Miriam thought this would make a fine bracelet!

We had a late dinner and enjoyed s'mores around the campfire. I read to the kids from William Henderson Dickson's autobiography. His family was sent to Lovell in 1900 to colonize and build an irrigation canal. You might be sitting there thinking idyllic thoughts of a family gathered around the warm glow of the campfire enjoying family stories. While we did have some of that, we also had fighting over sitting to close to someone else, interrupting, wandering off, typical family behaviors. So far, we haven't had a problem with mosquitoes. As it was getting dark, we could see lots of bats swooping around our area. Maybe they were eating them up for us.

Isaac's ear is bothering him again. I brought ear drops but they don't help with pain. He didn't appreciate Anastaya remarking that no one has gotten sick this trip (we seem to always have someone end up with a bad cold or flu on a vacation). He feels plenty sick.