Casper and Buffalo, WY

    We traveled north to Casper and stayed for a few days.  It had beautiful snow in the mountains and wonderful history museums.  We went to Fort Casper, Casper Wildlife Museum, and a museum at the local Casper College with a skeleton of a Colombian Mammoth found around in 2005 near Casper.  We also visited the National Emmigrant Trails Interpretive Site!  We learned lots!!!!!!!!!!!
    

At Fort Casper, next to the Sweetwater River, was a reproduction of the Mormon ferry.  On the Sweetwater, several Mormon men were left behind to man a ferry service theyhad build for the first Mormon immigrants. They charged nothing for future Mormon immigrants but charged for others.  What a smart business move!

Fort Casper was a small rugged fort.

In the wildlife museum, there was a skeleton of a Pronghorn as well as a whole exhibit.  The museum was donated to Casper by a hunter who had rooms of taxidermy specimens from all of Wyoming and elsewhere.  It was a great place.  Below are pronghorn, Johns favorite western animal, fighting.

 After a few days in Casper, we arrived in Buffalo, an old western small town trying tourism now. Most things were closed until the summer season starting Memorial Day, but we were told we could go to the local Hotel and look around. It was open for business and they let people wander the old hotel. Boy, did we fall into another wonderful part of history and completely free! It was an amazing place. Patrick and Jim, did you miss something!  The reason it has so much original is because one of the owners had the hotel for a very long time and never tossed things out, just stored them. It has almost all the original tin ceilings and woodwork and built-ins including a wonderful huge sideboard and the original bar. Like most old finds, it almost was torn down. They have been finding stuff everywhere and people in the town have donated items found in their attics, etc. back to the hotel. If you are ever in Buffalo, WY and need a place to stay right out of the old west, stay at the Occidental Hotel.

The lobby of the Occidental Hotel and Saloon cira 1880.
Below is the saloon with original bar ceiling, etc.

Below is one of the Bordello Rooms.  There were rooms above the saloon used for these purposes.  There was a back stairway with cowboy spur marks on the stairs and one room door had huge marks from a gun butt. One cowpoke did
not like his lady with another!

The front of the building on the main street in Buffalo.

John waiting patiently for me in the lobby of the hotel

One of the hallways of the hotel

We left Buffalo and headed over the Bighorn Mountains through Powder River Pass at 9,660 feet. This is the lower section of the road.  Several feet of snow were on the sides of the road in the mountains.  This picture was taken while we were coming down into the valley.  It was 18 miles of down, down, down. We will not go that way again with the motor home!!!!  Cody is in the valley just outside of Yellowstone National Park.