Wyoming - big sky yes lawd.

Today we drove from Spearfish, SD to Cody, Wyoming. Spearfish, SD - a town that none of y'all will probably ever have the pleasure of experiencing, but they have fast food and a holiday inn. That's enough to please me I guess. Anyhow, we left Spearfish and headed into Wyoming, where we stopped off to see the Devil's Tower. The Devil's Tower is a rock formation that stands over 800' above the ground, and it's pretty damn impressive. The picture above doesn't really do it justice. Anyhow, we hiked around it, and believe it or not we actually saw people climbing to its peak. I mean, I thought they were crazy. Alex saw them and was like, "oh, I want to do that someday!!!" I dunno, scaling 800 feet of slick horizontal rock isn't really on my to-do list, but I have to admire his willingness to give it a shot.

After we left Devil's Tower we headed back to I-90 (my good friend I-90, I think I've driven over 1000 miles on this road so far) and towards Cody. Let me first say that Wyoming is wide open space. I was really digging seeing all the open land and sky. It really is beautiful. After a couple more hours of driving we stopped in Gillete, WY to eat lunch at Porky's Pig, or something like that. It was a barbecue joint. Alex got some pulled pig that he said was good, but my buffalo burger didn't live up to expectations. But at least I was able to eat some buffalo, which I thought was necessary since we were in Wyoming. After lunch we hit the road and headed down a two lane highway to Cody. On this route we climbed through some mountains and took a couple of the pictures I've posted here. After we made it through the mountains it was nice, easy driving into Cody. I think I got the silver bullet audi up to 100 at one point, but it didn't seem like it as the scale of distances is so completely different here.

Once we got checked into our hotel Alex and I watched the Heat get dominated in game 2 of the NBA finals. Good gracious, the boys better pick it up in game 3 or it's over. But whatever. After the game I made Alex go to the Irma Hotel and Saloon for a few drinks with me. Apparently this was Buffalo Bill's hotel and bar, so I felt like a real western cowboy pounding back a few drinks here. And the bartender was extremely friendly and chatted us up a bit. What was especially nice about her, though, was that she made the beam and cokes exactly how I make them - nearly transparent. Yes lawd. Unfortunately, though, it was a rather dead night in Cody and there was really no one out drinking other than me, Alex, a few bikers, and some cowboys. Really, that was about it. Think we looked out of place at all?

Speaking of dead, one of the funnier things I saw leaving South Dakota was in Deadwood. South Dakota and Wyoming are real hardcore places. Everything here has names like "Deadwood Black Mountain Cowboy Biker Hills Pass Buffalo Sacred Ground Cattle Ranch Saloon". It's a tough place. But not as tough as it may seem, because in the town of Deadwood, on Cemetery Ave., there's a fast-food mexican place called "Taco Jim's". How the hell did they let a place with a name like "Taco Jim's" (complete with a caricature of a big smiling Mexican man on its neon sign) into this town? That shit ain't hardcore at all. I bet ol' Wild Bill rolled over in his grave when they built that one.