Buffalo Bill Historical Center and Stampede Rodeo

(This post was interrupted this morning by poor response times on the computer and our self imposed requirement to be out-the-door by 8:30 AM today).

We got a fairly early start to visit the Historical Center yesterday. Our plan was to see as much of the 5 museums as we could in one day and return home in time to go the Stampede Rodeo at 8 PM. If we we were not able to see everything in one day, we could return today as the admission was good for 2 consecutive days. It turned out that we were able to see all of the museums in one day as we spent about 5 hours touring the complex. There was so much history and lore associated with these museums it was nearly impossible to see every aspect of each of the museums.

Starting with the entrance:

The admissions desk was just inside this entrance and we purchased our 2 senior tickets for $13 each, which entitled us to the 2 day admission. Our first museum visit was going to be the Plains Indian Museum but we took a slight detour to see the boyhood home of Buffalo Bill Cody that was moved here from Iowa and set up on this site some time ago. It is a plain, Midwestern home:

The Plains Indian Museum was just packed full of the history of all the tribes in the western part of the country. It would be impossible to show all the superb displays in this museum so I have only included a shot of one of the many areas:

There were probably a half dozen separate areas with displays in this museum and we spent probably 2 hours total in this first museum.

The next one we went through was the Buffalo Bill Museum and it too was packed full of mementos from his scouting days, and days in the military, not to mention items from when he ran the Wild West show for which he is most noted:

Most Scouts for the military in those days were only commissioned for one campaign, but Bill Cody was a Scout for 5 years and eventually became Chief of Scouts - something that not too many people knew about him.

We moved on over to the Whitney Gallery of Western Art and were amazed at the many beautiful paintings, sculptures and statues that were part of Buffalo Bill's era. There were paintings of Yellowstone that were done in the 1890's and they look as though they were just completed:

After a visit to the Draper Museum of Natural History, which was a walk through the various depictions of Yellowstone at different elevations, the geology and the animals that inhabit the Park, we toured the Cody Firearms Museum - not one that Josie was looking forward to, but one that I found exciting:

This final photo of our tour of the museums is of of the Cody Scout Statue, which is in the rear of the Museum's complex:

We enjoyed the day at the museums and were glad that we were able to see what we wanted to see in one long day.

To make the day even longer, we had tickets to the Cody Stampede Rodeo for the first night of this annual professional Rodeo competition. Since we had photos of the Nitely Rodeo that we already went to in a previous post, we only have a couple shots from last night. The first is of the arena and the stands before the competition started:

The Rodeo started at 8 PM with this color guard, representing the Armed Forces, that paraded around the arena and led the crowd in the singing of the National Anthem:

There is no question that the riders and ropers we saw last night are much better than the Nitely Rodeo cowboys. They have to start somewhere. We watched the bare back riding, steer wrestling, team roping and saddle bronc competition before we left at 11 PM.

What a great day yesterday, and today was even better for us as we returned to Yellowstone and did the northern route. That post will be done tomorrow AM, I hope...