On Monday (9/16/19) we continued on from Three Forks, MT to Cody, WY by taking I-90 East to US-310 South at Laurel, MT. We pulled off the road at a Historic landmark just South of Bridger, MT. The historic landmark (sign) documented that the Bridger Trail (a.k.a. Bridger Cutoff) passed nearby. We must have been in potato farming country because we watched a number of truckloads of potatoes pass by while we ate our lunch.
Just past our lunch stop we jumped on MT-72 which became WY-120 when we crossed into Wyoming. This was a very scenic two lane highway, but definitely beyond civilization. We only encountered a few other vehicles on this 60 mile leg.
We spent three nights at Absaroka Bay Campground in Cody. The sites were gravel with irrigated strips of grass between sites. They were a little close, but no more so than the previous campground, the difference being no trees or bushes (which I’m not sure grow in Wyoming). The bathrooms were nice and so was the laundry facility. In fact, the laundry was only $1.25 a load, so Beth made sure to catch up on laundry while we were there. The best part was that this was one of the few campgrounds we’ve encountered with usable WiFi.
Site C5 
Site C5
Tuesday was a cool (high in the low 50’s) windy day. We went into town in the afternoon and shopped for trinkets for the grandchildren and then ate a late lunch at the Cody Steakhouse. The meal was excellent and very reasonably priced. We got caught in the rain leaving the restaurant so the cold, windy, rainy high speed walk many blocks back to the Tahoe were enough to convince us to go back and snuggle up in the camper.
On Wednesday we visited the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museum. It is comprised of a number of museums. The Buffalo Bill Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Natural History Museum, Western Art Museum, and most importantly the Cody Firearms Museum (I think they had every gun ever made). The museum also had a Raptor rescue facility where they provide housing and medical care for birds of pray that have been permanently injured to the extent that they could no longer survive in the wild. They held a Raptor Experience education session that we attended in the early afternoon. We got to meet and learn about Isham the red-tailed hawk and Monte the eastern screech-owl.
I started noticing advertising along the interstates for Taco John’s when we first hit I-35 in Iowa and have been seeing it regularly throughout the West. By the time we reached Montana, I told Beth I was trying out a Taco John’s before this trip was over. So we started watching for Taco John’s at our fuel stops, but the logistics never worked (usually the parking lots were too small to pull our rig into and get back out). Well guess what, there was a Taco John’s practically across the road from this campground and since Taco John’s originated in Wyoming (Cheyenne) this was obviously an omen. So we took our maiden voyage after visiting the museum. It’s very similar to Taco Bell but we both agreed that the standard taco at Taco John’s was much better. We also tried chicken quesadillas and that might be a tie. Taco John’s quesadilla has a LOT of quality cheese, but tastes fairly plain compared to whatever sauce Taco Bell uses in their quesadilla. The other thing we liked was that the condiments came in large quantities. Both the sour cream and nacho cheese came in containers two to three times the size Taco Bell provides. In fact, I ran out of their little potatoes before I ran out of nacho cheese (don’t worry, I found a way to consume the remainder of the cheese). Overall we were happy with our Taco John’s experience.
