Visiting Buffalo Bill's grave and museum.

DAKOTA RIDGE RV PARK-GOLDEN,CO. 6/13/11

Wake up time today was about 0800. After breakfast I made yesterday's journal entry. Had to go back to Walgreen's to get a prescription that had to be called in by the doc back home...refills ran out. Edie needed to do some shopping and we discovered a large indoor mall withing a couple miles of here. She covered the whole thing in a couple hours. I mostly sat on benches or rocking chairs in the walkways. We then came back home to get some lunch.

On the way back from Black Hawk the other day, we saw signs pointing to Buffalo Bill's grave site and museum. That was news to us, so when we got home I looked it up on the internet, and sure enough he is buried high up on Lookout Mountain, just west of us. So we made the drive up there this afternoon. The top of the mountain is about 2000 feet above our yard here, around 7500 feet ASL. There is a viewing platform outside the museum, where the pictures above were taken, that affords a fantastic view to the east. It was Bill's request that he be buried there where you can look out over the plains that he loved. The write up in the museum says you can see 4 states from there. I would guess Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado.

Displays in the museum chronicle his varied careers..buffalo hunter, soldier, entertainer and author among others. A larger than life individual. He was living in Denver, with his sister, when he died in 1917. After his death his body lay in state in the rotunda of the State Capitol, and was viewed by a reported 25,000 people. Two other locations..Cody, Wyoming (which he founded) and Platte City, Nebrasks (where he lived for a time) lay claim to be his final resting place. His sister said Lookout Mountain was absolutely the site he had requested. At one point after he was buried, the Colorado National Guard, stationed a tank at the grave to prevent any one from tampering with it. After his wife died and was buried beside him, they covered the graves with a thick slab of concrete to seal it forever.

There are some books on display in the museum that list every town, by state, where the Wild West show performed. We looked at Georgia and Savannah was the closest to Statesboro. We then looked in Ohio, and lo and behold, the show was in Bellefontaine, MY HOME TOWN, in 1881,'82,'83 and 1910. First time I had ever heard of that. Small world..

We decided to eat out at the Lone Star Steakhouse a couple miles from here. Had a good steak with the trimmings. I stowed our lawn chairs in the coach and washed the windshield when we got back.

Sitting here doing this journal, I can see some really black clouds to the southeast of us, moving to the northeast. There has been some pretty spectacular lightning but we have only had some light sprinkles here. We were just about on the edge of it. Looking at the radar on the weather bug, there doesn't seem to be any more coming behind us.

Tomorrow will be alarm clock morning again, since it's wagons westward HO to Grand Junction in western Colorado. The trip is 236 miles and includes a climb to above 11,000 feet on I 70 along the way. I hope this Ford and I can both handle that....we won't be up there long. Bedtime before long..

Jun 13, 2011

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