{"id":978,"date":"2015-08-16T21:30:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T02:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=978"},"modified":"2015-08-16T21:30:11","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T02:30:11","slug":"thermopolis-is-fun-to-say-our-wyoming-adventure-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=978","title":{"rendered":"Thermopolis Is Fun to Say – Our Wyoming Adventure, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

“They put a stoplight on the map? Wait, there’s only one stoplight?!” That was Lily’s reaction when looking over the Thermopolis, Wyoming, visitor’s guide. Thermopolis may be only a one-stoplight town, but it provided plenty of things to do and see on the second day of our Wyoming adventure.<\/p>\n

\"Welcome<\/a>The day had a slow start, thanks to our very late arrival at the hotel the night before. We took our time getting ready, then went out for breakfast, stopping in the parking lot to take a few photos of the carved bears and elk antlers decorating our hotel, the Elk Antler Inn. The hotel had no lack of whimsical decor — the shower curtain in our room featured a woodland scene with a moose — and the girls loved it. It wasn’t actual wildlife, but close enough for the morning of day two!<\/p>\n

We had breakfast at the Black Bear Cafe in downtown Thermopolis (two blocks over from the stoplight), where they have cinnamon rolls as big as your head. I mean that entirely literally. It took all three of us to eat one. After all those hours in the car the day before, it was nice to enjoy a leisurely breakfast. And a giant cinnamon roll.<\/p>\n

\"Slow<\/a>When you visit a one-stoplight town in the middle of Wyoming, what’s your first stop after breakfast? The chamber of commerce, of course! Actually, the Thermopolis chamber of commerce doubles as the town visitor center, and the girls were hoping to score more of those cool Wyoming stickers we picked up at a welcome center the day before. We got our stickers, and we learned about the fascinating Tipi Fountain just outside the chamber of commerce. About a hundred years ago, a fountain was installed by the city. Minerals in the fountain water accumulated over time, and now there’s a fifteen-foot-tall rock dome covering the fountain! Lily and I took a ton of photos. We don’t have such things in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\"Zarafasaura\"<\/a>Next stop was the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. I was worried that the dinosaur center in a one-stoplight town might be a little dinky, but I had no need to fear. The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is an impressive installation, with a collection of dinosaur fossils on display that rivals those in any major metropolitan museum. You wind your way through a few hallways with exhibits showing the evolution of life from ocean to land (including the second best Archaeopteryx fossil on the planet, according to the sign), then exit into a large gallery featuring the skeletons of a couple of dozen dinos, including Jimbo, the supersaurus discovered not far away in Douglas, Wyoming. A supersaurus looks a lot like a brontosaurus, for those of us whose dino knowledge is largely limited to The Land Before Time<\/em>, and Jimbo is an impressive 106 feet from nose to tail. Triceratops, velociraptors, a T-rex… all the cool dinosaurs were on display.<\/p>\n

\"Something<\/a>As amazing as Jimbo was, the highlight of our visit to the dinosaur center was the excursion to the active dig site a few miles away. The SI Quarry (SI = Something Interesting) was once the muddy bottom of a lake, and the site has turned up hundreds of bones from several different types of dinosaurs. Our friendly, knowledgeable guide was an excellent storyteller. The girls and I found his paleontology stories fascinating as we tramped around the dig site looking at dinosaur bones and footprints. Our timing was good, too. Had we visited last year, we would have found the entire site closed to the public. Turns out, they had it covered up so they could dynamite more of the mountain out of the way!<\/p>\n

Elk antlers hanging over our hotel room? Check. Giant rock created by mineral deposits? Check. Hundred-foot-long dinosaur skeleton? Check. With a few unique experiences under our belts for the morning, it was time to get lunch. We picked up some supplies for sandwiches at the local grocery store (cheap!) and found a picnic table at nearby Hot Spring State Park (fun!) where we ate lunch and filmed the first of several video diaries. If you’d like to see my daughters at their silliest, just point a video camera at them. “What’s the highlight of your day so far, Lily?” “This yogurt!” Documentary filmmakers, we are not.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>After lunch we enjoyed another uniquely Thermopolis experience: a visit to the thermal baths of Hot Springs State Park. Imagine a small swimming pool, fed entirely by mineral-rich hot springs water. During our trip to the baths, the water temperature was right around 102\u00b0F.\u00a0 I’ll admit that I’m not much of a pool guy. I can’t see very well without my glasses, I’m not a strong swimmer, and my upper body doesn’t warrant going shirtless. I was a bit worried about how the thermal baths would go, but I could have stayed in there all day. The water felt great, thanks to the temperature and the minerals, and the girls and I had a great time.<\/p>\n

The thermal baths also gave Lily a chance to test out the waterproof feature of her new camera. The camera was billed as waterproof, not “waterproof in really hot water,” so I was a little nervous when she first dunked the camera in the baths. But it worked great, and we had a blast taking photos of each other underwater. We even had a fellow swimmer, a friendly mom from Michigan, take our family photo in the thermal baths, one of, I think, three photos of all three of us taken the entire trip. And Lily was thrilled to have a waterproof camera. As the younger child, she’s acutely aware of things she gets to do that the older one didn’t or can’t. Hannah’s new camera had its own strength (super-zoom, we called it), but it couldn’t go in the water!<\/p>\n

\"Buffalo<\/a>The rest of the day in Thermopolis was just gravy, as far as I was concerned, after the fun we had in the thermal baths. Once we got dried off and dressed, we headed out into Hot Springs State Park in search of the (domesticated) herd of buffalo they have there. We didn’t find it, but we saw some amazing landscapes as we drove up and down and around the foothills north of Thermopolis. By this point in the day, it was full on sunshine, and the photo ops were everywhere. Hannah generally stayed in the car to read (she was 80% done with the sixth Harry Potter book, so who could blame her), but Lily and I hopped out half a dozen times to take pictures. We spotted a fence that went on and on, up and down hills all the way to the horizon, meant to corral the buffalo, and Lily shouted, “Fence Friday!” That’s a Flickr group I’ve joined where people post photos of cool fences every Friday. My little photographer!<\/p>\n

\"Bingo\"<\/a>We had one last stop before leaving Thermopolis, and that was the hot springs themselves, just up the hill from the thermal baths. We took the boardwalks across the springs, which are a flat expanse of mostly orange rock with a thin layer of very hot water on top, fed from a few springs here and there. I have to admit, I was kind of disappointed. I had hoped for a little more color in the rocks, or something. It wasn’t until Lily and I crossed a nearby suspension bridge (Hannah doesn’t do bridges, if she can help it) and saw the riverbank we had been walking on from the other side of the Bighorn River that we realized what the real attraction was. The mineral-rich water bubbled across the flat rocks, then over the side of the riverbank down, where hundreds of years of deposits have created an otherworldly set of rock formations. It was stunning, a reaction Lily and I had at the same time when we crossed the bridge and looked back. Oh, there’s the natural wonder!<\/p>\n

\"Plenty<\/a>We left Thermopolis around 4, after a very full day. We had a 90-minute drive to Cody, Wyoming, our next stop, and I wanted to get there by 6 so we had time to eat before the Cody Night Rodeo, said to be a must-see. We drove through some absolutely beautiful northwest Wyoming landscape that afternoon, and we saw our first wildlife of the trip — a family of pronghorn antelopes! They were grazing not far from the side of the road, with a turnoff not far, so we pulled over and marveled at the creatures. And by marveled, I mean we took several dozen photos. Hannah’s super-zoom saw some action! We learned later that \"Pronghorn<\/a>pronghorns (which aren’t technically antelopes) are the fastest land mammal in North America, capable of reaching 55mph for short bursts and holding 35mph for a couple of miles. It’s likely they evolved outrun cheetahs, before cheetahs went extinct in North America. They’re built for speed, not for jumping, which is why we saw this pronghorn family ducking under a nearby fence, instead of going over it. They’re beautiful creatures, and we ended up seeing dozens of them all over Wyoming.<\/p>\n

We arrived in Cody just in time to check into our hotel and have a quick dinner, then headed out to the night rodeo. The rodeo was the most red-state thing I’ve done in recent memory, with a prayer-and-patriotism-filled opening, followed by plenty of animal husbandry and jokes about traditional gender roles. The night rodeo clowns have microphones, and most of their jokes are terrible. The two cowboys who chased down bucking broncos, after the riders had been tossed, were both wearing rainbow shirts, and there was at least one joke about them being able to get married now. That joke was at least a little funny. Oh, and lots of beer, although we didn’t partake.<\/p>\n

The calf roping segment was a little disturbing, with panicked looking calves running across the arena, only to be lassoed and brought to very sudden stops. But the bull and bronco riding was impressive, and the barrel racers — young women who raced their horses at high speed through the arena, weaving in and out of barrels — were incredible. There was a ten-year-old barrel racer who’s my new hero. That girl could ride. All in all, not a bad way to spend the evening, although it went on too long. We missed the last few bull riders so we could get back to the hotel at a reasonable hour. We were pooped, after a very full day of seeing and doing things we had never seen or done before.<\/p>\n

And this was just the second day of our trip!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“They put a stoplight on the map? Wait, there’s only one stoplight?!” That was Lily’s reaction when looking over the Thermopolis, Wyoming, visitor’s guide. Thermopolis may be only a one-stoplight town, but it provided plenty of things to do and see on the second day of our Wyoming adventure. The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[139,49,53,13,136],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-dinosaurs","tag-little-sister","tag-photography","tag-wyoming","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}