A Stop in Buffalo, Wyoming

This is part fourteen of a travel series to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks.  If you'd like to start at the beginning, go HERE!

Once our vacation in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons came to an end, we began the long journey home stopping at a few towns a long the way.  Last week I wrote about Cody, Wyoming, this week I'm going to share Buffalo Wyoming.  

Buffalo is located about three hours from Cody.  This town really took us by surprise.  It wasn't on our itinerary at all, but we were ready to stretch our legs so we thought we'd check it out.  

The downtown historic treat was so cute!  We also liked how it wasn't super busy like a lot of other touristy towns are. 

We weren't hungry for lunch yet, which was a real bummer as The Busy Bee Cafe had rave reviews, so we spent our time walking up and down the Main Street and doing some shopping.  And yes, we actually shopped here!  Normally when we go sight-seeing shopping we never buy anything. The stores are either too pricey or don't have anything we want.  But the prices in Buffalo were very reasonable and we found a lot of goodies to take home like a cast iron tea kettle and an antique shovel for our wood stove.

The highlight of Buffalo Wyoming's main street is the Occidental Hotel.  Oh, this place is so cool!  It has so much history.  And guess what?  You can go inside and tour the entire downstairs, but you're not allowed upstairs where the rooms are.  It is so beautiful inside, and they have old photos and old newspapers framed on the walls so you can read all about the history of the hotel.

This is the lobby.  Just look at that ceiling!

The hotel was founded in 1880 and was visited by many famous people of the Old West due to its proximity to the Bighorn Mountains and the Bozeman Trail.  Buffalo Bill, Teddy Roosevelt, Calamity Jane, and even Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent time at the Occidental Hotel.

As I said earlier, only registered guests were allowed upstairs.  But all their beautiful rooms are available to view on line.  All the rooms and suites are furnished with antiques and decorated in elegant period style.

A dining area.

The bar was the most incredible bar I've ever seen.  Just look at that wood work!

The hotel is registered on the National Historic Register.  The owners took exceptional care to keep all its original beauty in tact including antiques original to the hotel and bullet holes in the walls of the saloon.

There is a lot of taxidermy in the hotel.  My daughter would not like this place because she doesn't like dead animals used as decorations, but hubby found the brown bear too irresistible.

In the gift shop I found this t-shirt.  How fun!

Back outside, we found their town square where they had a new looking covered stage area. 

Buffalo has the coolest murals.  We loved this one with the wild horses!

Lolly's Sugar Shack is the place to get your caffeine and sugar fix in town.  Once again, I fell in love with their tin ceilings.

If you're ever near the area on your way to Yellowstone and need a place to stop and stretch your legs or grab something to eat, stop in Buffalo Wyoming! You won't regret it!

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

For more information on our trip out west, please check out these posts:

YELLOWSTONE:

Old Faithful

The Grand Prismatic Spring

Firehole Canyon Drive

Fountain Paint Pot, Lake Hotel and Cabins, and Hayden Valley

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

The Yellowstone Caldera, Tower Fall, Calcite Springs, & the Roosevelt Arch

Mammoth Hot Springs

The Golden Gate of Yellowstone, Mud Volcanos and the Fishing Bridge

Nearby Western Towns Not To Be Missed:

Jackson Hole Wyoming 

Cody, Wyoming

The Grand Tetons:

Mormon Row, Craig Thomas Visitor Center, and Jenny Lake

Mt. Moran, Signal Mountain, Chapel of the Sacred Heart, Jackson Lake Dam, Jackson Lake Lodge, Oxbow Bend, Elk Ranch Flats, and Snake River

The Buffalo Bill Dam

 

My Newly Redecorated Family Room

This is a post that is five years over due but I can finally say that the Family Room Make Over we started half a decade ago, is FINALLY FINISHED!  Hip Hip Hooray!

Quite often I wish I could live in an HGTV world where in a period of thirty minutes a room could be transformed, but realistically that is not life.  Over five years ago my husband and I decided to redecorate our family room because with my daughter's growing family, we really needed a fourth bedroom and more living space for us to gather as a family comfortably.   You can see the BEFORE project HERE,  where I share all the construction details of the new bedroom within the family room, and then you can see how we made small changes HERE that we lived with for five years before we completed it this year.

We began the project in the winter of 2019 before Covid arrived.  We just finished the bedroom portion of our new room when we had to stop because my husband's hours were cut from five days a week to four and with all the uncertainty going on in the world, we weren't even sure how much longer he'd have a job.  We lived with the room as is for five years.  Eventually we did purchase a new tv stand and coffee table, but kept the same rug and furniture.  Below is the BEFORE photo.

The BEFORE wasn't terrible.  The rug was dated, and the furniture had seen better days.  The real issue, is when nine people wanted to gather in the room to watch a movie there wasn't enough room.  We knew we needed new furniture but we could not figure out how to fit it in such an oddly shaped room with only one and a half solid walls.

Finally we decided the only answer was to flip the room because all the wall space was on the other side.  We didn't think we could do that because the tv would be above the balcony railing and we thought it would look odd.  But out of desperation, we decided to try it, and discovered, it wasn't that bad.

Here are the AFTER photos with the room flipped and a new sectional

We could not believe what a difference flipping the room made.  It created so much more space.  The small room now felt open and spacious and we could suddenly fit a sectional that comfortably seats six to eight adults, and even more little kids!

This is the view as seen from the bedroom.

I purchased  a new painting as my old ones were both vertical and I wanted one large horizontal painting.  It turned out this landscape painting from Hobby Lobby was not only the perfect size but it contained all the colors in my new room too. 

I had to get rid of my large end tables because they no longer fit in the room but now I had a lighting challenge as I couldn't have table lamps.  I solved that problem by hanging a Rattan Pendant Light in one dark corner and two floor lamps in the other corners.  We also have overhead lighting but we rarely used it.

I love the shadow designs my new rattan lamp projects on the wall.

The clock is also from Hobby Lobby.  I keep feeling this wall needs something else, but I haven't decided what yet.  Any suggestions?

It just so happened that our old Smart TV died right before we decided to flip the room.  At first, we were bummed as it was not that old, but when we got a new one, guess what?  It is completely wireless and doesn't require cables!  That means we could put it anywhere in the room!  So it ended up being a blessing in disguise as I don't think we would have been able to flip the room otherwise.

Now how do I feel about the tv not being up against the wall?  I don't like that if you're downstairs and look up you can see the back of a tv.  But you know how many times I've done that? Once, when we first moved the tv.  I haven't even noticed it since.  And another benefit was that I can watch tv during the day without the sun reflecting on the tv because the tv's back is facing the sunny windows.  So it is a win win!

I recently adopted two new little kittens so I put this sticky plastic on the bottom portion of the new furniture and on the sides that I know cats like to scratch.  I then covered up the sides with throw blankets, and so far, it's worked.  The new kittens have not ruined my new furniture.

We decided on wall-to-wall carpeting because we have four small grandchildren and we were always worried they would get hurt on the hard tile when wrestling (three of them are boys).  I chose a light grey color to contrast against the dark grey furniture and brighten the room up a bit.

The tv wall seemed kinda empty with just the tv stand, so I added a quilt rack to display some of my quilts, a basket to hold extra throw blankets, and a tall straw vase that holds tall dried flowers.

We couldn't fit all the pieces of our sectional against the wall, so we had to put one portion in the corner by itself.  We knew before we bought it that this would be the case as we measured very carefully before purchasing.  I actually really love this cute reading nook!

I'm able to fit two quilts on this rack, but you can only see one, the other is behind it.

If you're wondering where I purchased my furniture, I took a risk and bought it from Wayfair.  I was terrified of buying furniture that I never sat on, but it ended up being one of the best purchases I ever made.  We spent an entire day going to furniture stores in our town and there just was nothing that was working with our measurements, plus there were long wait times and huge delivery fees.  We spent $1000 less buying from Wayfair and paid $0 for delivery.  My only advice if you buy from Wayfair is to read EVERY SINGLE REVIEW and MEASURE carefully.  We felt the reviews were spot on!  This is such a popular sectional it is sold out in all colors but beige, you can see it HERE!

Have A Great Day! Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

 

How We Spent A Day In Cody, Wyoming

This is part thirteen of a travel series to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks.  If you'd like to start at the beginning, go HERE!

There are lots of cute western towns surrounding the Yellowstone area:  Jackson Hole, Gardiner, West Yellowstone, and Cody, to name just a few.  We popped in to see a couple of them, and then we also spent a day or two in the others.  They are all so fun to visit!  Because we were arriving in Yellowstone from the East, we spent two days in Cody:  one on our way into Yellowstone and one on our way out.

Cody is most famous for their rodeo, which we unfortunately did not attend.  I didn't know about the rodeo until later in the day that we were there, but if we ever go back, I'll make sure to get rodeo tickets.  So our day in Cody was mostly spent shopping, eating, and visiting "Old Trail Town".

You can read the sign above to learn all about "Old Trail Town".  It really is quite amazing and worthy of a visit.  The history in this place and how they managed to gather up all the original buildings and even the graves of the most infamous western characters is amazing.

I took photos of every single building and sign but I ended up with so many photos that if I placed them all here my post would be ten pages long!  So I'm gonna just show you a few highlights.

Below is a carpentry shop.  It is one of the first buildings of Cowley, Wyoming.   It was built in 1901 and used by George Taggart.  A Mormon pioneer that came to the Big Horn Basin by Wagon Train in 1900.

Next is "Curly's Cabin".  A log cabin home of Custer's Crow Indian Scout, Curly.  Curly escaped from the "Battle of the Little Bighorn" on June 25, 1876 and brought the news of Custer's defeat.  The Cabin was built near Crow Agency, Montana about 1885.

Below is the "Morrison Cabin" .  This cabin was built at the foot of Copper Mountain, East of Shoshoni, Wyoming, by Luther Morrison in 1884.  The Morrisons brought some of the first sheep into central Wyoming in 1882.  Morrison had originally come west on the Oregon Trail in 1853.

This is a Buffalo Hunter's Cabin.  The cabin was built on Shell Creek at the hunting camp of Jim White and Oliver Hanna in 1880.  Jim White was murdered at the camp in late October 1880.  The cabin was later used by Al Kershner when he homesteaded the property in 1889.

The Shell Store. This was the first store in Shell, Wyoming.  It was built in 1892,

As I mentioned early, the property also contain the graves of some of the Wild West's most infamous residences.  This is the gravesite of Jeremiah Johnson...wow! What a character he was.  I hope you can enlarge the photo enough to read about his life on the plaque, if not, google him.  We had to rent the movie with Robert Redford when we returned home just for fun.  I think they "tamed" his character in the movie quite a bit. 

The natural background couldn't be more perfect for this Wild West town.

The violence of this time period was so evident when reading the history of all the buildings, but seeing actual bullet holes in doors and walls was shocking and made it real for us.

I highly recommend visiting "Old Trail Town" to learn all about the history of the area.  

After our tour we went to the Main Street in Cody to do some shopping.  The town of Cody isn't as cute as Gardiner, Jackson Hole, or West Yellowstone,;  it is more spread out and modern.  I should also mention they have a huge museum in Cody:  The Buffalo Bill Center of the West.  It has five museums under one roof:  The Buffalo Bill Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Cody Firearms Museum, Draper Natural History Museum, and Whitney Western Art Museum.  Our time did not allow us to visit it as it would have eaten up a good portion of our day as it is so large. It is so large, your ticket is good for TWO DAYS! 

We did enjoy some great food and treats in Cody.  Once again we had handmade Huckleberry Ice Cream, this time at Annie's Soda Saloon.  This place is so cute! They are known for their Old Fashioned Soda Fountain, but customers rave about their ice cream and food too.

I just loved the decor in this place.

For dinner, we ate at "Michael's Tacos".  It was just a little store front restaurant but the food was AMAZING and very reasonably priced. 

But probably my favorite restaurant of all was Rooster's Cafe.  Oh my gosh! Incredible!  I loved everything about this restaurant from the decor to all the food.  It is a "farm to table" establishment, which are always my favorite type of restaurants.  We had a hearty breakfast of French toast and an omelette and then we got a cinnamon roll to take with us,

The tin ceiling was just gorgeous, and the cow print benches were such a cute western touch.

We also enjoyed a meal at "Granny's Restaurant" when we first arrived in Cody.  It is quite popular.  I didn't take any photos of it.  We both ordered the "Old Time Sandwich".  It was good, but nothing exceptional.  I think it is better known for their amazing breakfasts.

I can't leave without sharing this photo of a deer enjoying a neighbors yard.  I guess you don't need to go into Yellowstone to see wildlife afterall.  😀

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

For more information on our trip out west, please check out these posts:

YELLOWSTONE:

Old Faithful

The Grand Prismatic Spring

Firehole Canyon Drive

Fountain Paint Pot, Lake Hotel and Cabins, and Hayden Valley

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

The Yellowstone Caldera, Tower Fall, Calcite Springs, & the Roosevelt Arch

Mammoth Hot Springs

The Golden Gate of Yellowstone, Mud Volcanos and the Fishing Bridge

Nearby Western Towns Not To Be Missed:

Jackson Hole Wyoming

The Grand Tetons:

Mormon Row, Craig Thomas Visitor Center, and Jenny Lake

Mt. Moran, Signal Mountain, Chapel of the Sacred Heart, Jackson Lake Dam, Jackson Lake Lodge, Oxbow Bend, Elk Ranch Flats, and Snake River

The Buffalo Bill Dam