Visit to Buffalo Bill Dam

Our spare time yesterday before going to work was spent taking a local trip to one of the famous attractions in the area. The Buffalo Bill Dam is only 6 miles from town on the highway to Yellowstone and was close enough for us to visit in the few hours we had. The terrain changes dramatically once you leave the town. After going through a few short tunnels that were carved into the mountains, you come out to the Visitor Center at the dam. The parking lot is about a 200 yard walk to the Visitor Center which sits on top of the dam:

This was the tallest dam in the world at one time when it was built in 1905 to create the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. There was a picture in the Visitor Center of the nation's Capital building superimposed on the dam and the dam was taller. The picture below is taken from the top of the dam looking down to the Shoshone River:

( It was very difficult for me to get close to the railing on top of this dam because of my fear of heights.) There were 25' added to the height of this dam in 1993 making the height a total of 353 feet.

We traveled a little further down the highway along the reservoir to see the beauty of this area with all the mountains surrounding the water:

There were beautiful homes along the other side of the road, on huge properties, that had "drop dead" views of the mountains and reservoir. Below is a picture of one of these homes:

We then turned back toward home and stopped along the way after passing through the tunnels again to try to get a shot of the dam from the front:

You can see a part of the dam in the upper center of the picture. There is a better place to get this kind of shot, but we didn't have the time to walk to the location. We will be returning to this site again, I'm sure.

We got back in plenty of time to have some lunch and get ready for work. It was another very, very busy day, and it appears that there will never be a slow day as long as we are here. The time goes by faster for us when we're busy but Josie is not yet quite as busy in the gift shop as I am at the front desk. Josie got off at 11 PM and I left work at about 11:45.

Today will probably be a day that we just hang out at home and get some things done here before going to work. Two more days and then we can visit some more interesting local attractions. We will be planning our trips to Yellowstone soon, so stay tuned...