Day 4 - Custer, SD to Cody, WY

Another fun filled day on the road. Up and out around 8:30 we drove back to Rapid City, passing the Crazy Horse monument on the way for a quick photo op, and visited the Reptile Gardens. Miles was psyched about this one and I must say it was pretty cool. Founded in 1937, it's the largest collection of reptiles in the world. We started off with the Crocodillian show. Fifty five crocs and gators and one guy with a stick. It was chilly today so they were pretty quiet. Until the bucket of raw chicken came out! We skipped the birds of prey show and the snake show in order to take in the main exhibit building. It was very cool and contained some of the most poisonous snakes in the world. Most of the top poisonous snakes are Taipans. I think it was the 3rd most poisonous snake who has a venom that one bite contains enough to kill 300 humans. Fortunately they were all behind glass! We stayed there until a little after 11:00am which put us on a tight schedule for the trip to Cody, WY. Before we left we hit the gift shop. Souvenir shopping has become the favorite part of the trip for the kids. Each place we visit the first thing they ask about is the gift shop. Yikes! We drove to Cody, for the most part following the directions provided to us by the GPS. I can't believe how much time I spent printing all those maps we hardly use! It's pretty good on the large scale but misdirected us to two hotels. My favorite feature is the little box down in the corner that tells you what time you are going to arrive at your destination. Very handy for keeping on schedule. The highlight of the drive was our trip through the Bighorn Mountains. We drove up to almost 10,000 feet, saw some elk, some moose (meese?) and drove by some snow that was 4 or 5 feet deep. The views from the mountain were beyond spectacular. We blew off the GPS a time or two and took some alternate routes that proved to be more than worth the slight delay. The GPS eventually recalculated and it really did only cost us a few minutes here and there. We arrived in Cody around 7:30pm MDT. We are staying at the Hotel Irma, a hotel built around 1902 by Buffalo Bill Cody for his daughter Irma. We had dinner this evening just down the street at Adriano's Italian Restaurant, by far the best dinner of the trip.