Last night was a blast (that is a Dave pun)! We went to the rodeo, which was great fun - bronc and bull riding, calf roping, bare back relay races, roping, etc. Some of the participants were quite young as the kids here learn to ride about the same time they learn to walk. The girls loved it! At one point, they decided they need to use the facilities, but when they saw that they would have to wait in line, they chose to go back to the stands so they wouldn’t miss the next event. The fireworks were set up quite a ways behind the stadium, but the wind was blowing our way and the smoke, grit, and even embers also came our way. Ella had a dime sized piece of burnt paper in her hair and got grit in her eyes and Zoe had a small ember land on her, but no one was seriously hurt. We left for the car before the fireworks were finished and very slowly made our way back to the house (there were many cars heading out a bit early) to wait for Charlie and gang. We had to drive slowly and swerve around fireworks set up on the street as we made our way back. The people of Lander must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fireworks as they were shooting off all over town.
The girls were reluctant to get out of bed this morning because they went to bed much later than usual and the local fireworks noise didn’t stop until close to midnight. We got them up and everyone had cereal and fruit for breakfast. We put last minute items in the duffles and packed up the truck, said good-bye and hugs all around to Charlie, Barb, Heidi, Chris, and Jason and were on our way. We stopped in town to gas up the truck and I noticed we call a text message from Charlie that we had left our chairs standing in front of his garage. We went back to pick them up and Barb came out with mayo and butter we had stored in her fridge. Wow! Talk about forgetful! We got on our way again, but this time with a full load on the truck and a full tank of gas. We all had a great time with C + B and were thankful for their great hospitality. They said they would try to come out this fall for a foliage tour - we sure do hope that works out. We drove up through Riverton and Thermopolis and stopped for lunch at Grannys diner in Cody. We had stopped here with the boys five years ago and remembered that they served a great lunch - they still do! We stopped to pick up groceries and then drove another hour plus to Yellowstone. It was another 40 minutes to our campground, but on the way, we admired the scenery and a one point stopped to let the girls play in a snow field close to the road. We set up camp and then a huge bull buffalo wandered over and plopped himself down for a rest in the grass about 20 feet from our tents. We stayed well away from him, but unfortunately, he was settling in for a nap. The other unfortunate thing was that he was about 10 feet away from our bear box where we had stored our dry goods that we had just purchased. The girls were making burgers, but the rolls were in the bear box so we dug around in our food box on the truck and found a few stale rolls and a half loaf of going-stale bread and managed to eek out a meal. We cleaned up and headed to Lake Village to call the girls’ folks as we have no cell service here. When we got there, we discovered there was no AT+T service, but there was Verizon, so we were able to use the old cell phone to call home. We got back to camp and headed into the tents as we could hear thunder coming closer. We had a huge thunder and lightening storm for about an hour and then everyone was able to fall asleep.
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