Wyoming is a big state. If you're trying to drive across it to get to Yellowstone from the Black Hills in the southwest corner of South Dakota, it's 460 miles and more than 8 hours of driving. Half way across the state, Rollin' Coals in the town of Buffalo looked like an OK place for a BBQ sandwich. Doug was behind the counter and, without even ordering, we got our first taste of an open carry state, and more.
After the initial shock, I was able to shift my gaze from Doug's right hip and order the BBQ sandwich and some ice tea. Somehow, ordering ice tea from a guy packing heat seemed a little like ordering a sarsaparilla soda from a bartender in "Gunsmoke." But Doug didn't even raise an eyebrow. "Unsweetened OK?" We had a nice chat with him across the counter, being careful to stay away from politics, religion and the Second Amendment.
Eventually we reached Cody and a warm bed and hot shower. We got up early the next morning, but a lot of people were already milling around the lobby when we got downstairs. "Yellowstone is closed" was all we could hear. Even though it was only mid-September, enough snow had fallen in the park while we slept to close all the roads into the park, except from Idaho. Clearly it was time for Plan B. And we were fortunate in being outside the park, not inside, when the road closure stopped all comings and goings, so Plan B was actually an option for us.
Our Plan B was to go around the park on the north side through Bozeman, Montana, which turned out to be a fine place with a great surprise on the marquee at the Ellen Theater on Main Street: "Dennis Quaid and the Sharks." The marquee also said "Sold Out" but that was before the two guys working in the lobby met Lora. Turns out that one of them, a guy named Guy, was originally from Scituate, MA, and the other guy, John, had come from Vermont. Both were great Red Sox fans, and when Lora was finished chatting them up, they put us in second row - center.
Then out came Dennis and his Sharks. He's a little older than he was 34 years ago in the "The Right Stuff" but he's still an "outside friend" kind of person, meaning the kind of neighborhood kid you don't let play inside your house because something will end up broken. He jumped and ran around the stage in a way that, in any normal person, would have to have been chemically induced. And he and his guys could actually sing and play.
We looked at a map when we got back to the hotel and saw that Driggs, Idaho looked like a good place to split up the drive from Bozeman to Ketchum. So that's where we headed the next morning. It turned out to be a pretty town, right up against the backside of the Tetons just 30 miles west of Jackson Hole.
We found a last-minute room at Dreamcatcher B&B. We could only wonder how our hosts Brian and Laurel, still in their early 20s, could possibly own this big fancy house. The answer is that they didn't. Husband-wife opera stars had built it as a home and school for their students. The 20 foot high main room, which had a spectacular view of the Tetons, was supposedly acoustically perfect. The owners' suite and a significant number of bedrooms for all the students were in two wings that extended out from the main room.
The opera school turned out to be a misguided venture, and John, a guy from New Jersey who was in the meat business, ultimately bought the property. John moved into the owner's suite, and he hired Brian and Laurel (then in Ohio) to maintain the property and manage the B&B operation. We met John while checking out, and stayed on for another hour talking with him about meat smokers, his electric straight bass and the bands he has played with, and Dennis Quaid. Then on to Ketchum.