Ten Sleep, Lightning and Horses

I woke up early and decided to take a morning walk up to the main house. It is wonderful being out early in the morning when it’s quiet. After that, I went to the Beta Coffeehouse, which has become my favorite place in Cody. I got a latte with huckleberry syrup to see what that would be like and I quite enjoyed it. It’s a little sweet and a little tart, just like me! Pudgy the dog greeted me when I came in, then, when my breakfast sandwich was ready, he got up from his chair and followed me back to my seat. There are signs all over the coffee shop saying not to feed Pudgy, but I think he’s hopeful that people maybe can’t read English? He settled at my feet for a while, basically until the next person’s order came up and then tried his luck elsewhere. While I was there, a large group of older Australian folks came in to get their coffees before they headed off to Yellowstone. It was strange to hear a whole bunch of accents from down under in such an American space.

My work that morning was to do the online order pick up at Walmart and drop it back off at the retreat center. Once I was done with that I hit the road. It was a cloudy and potentially rainy day so I decided to go for a drive through the farmland. My halfway point was a tiny town called Ten Sleep, which has an assortment of cafés and bars, and seems to be a popular place to hang out on the way to other areas nearby such as Cody, Yellowstone, and the Bighorn Mountains. The Daily Bread Bakery had a sign outside that said ‘Sinners Welcome’, lol. I had a stroll through the one block downtown lined with banners each with a picture of a graduating senior from Ten Sleep High School, it looks like there were probably 20 of them in total. One of them looked so much like Kieran, it stopped me in my tracks. He definitely would have fit in well there! 

The local museum had a free little library out front with a very prominent sign in front to watch out for wasps -yikes! As I passed through the next town, much bigger in size, I found a free little library outside of funeral home that was actually a little grief library, with an assortment of books for people who are dealing with different aspects of grief in their life. What a great concept.

I stopped in Thermopolis and had another soak in the hot springs pool, which was just as uncrowded as the last time I was there. Since it was a Thursday most of the stores in town were open, so I checked out the health food store I had heard so much about and got a wrap and a smoothie, both which were absolutely delicious and about half the price of what I would’ve paid at home.

I got back as the rain was setting in and had time for a quick shower before I needed to head up and help prepare dinner for one of the retreat groups. I just gotten out of the shower when the electricity suddenly went off. Erin returned home just a moment later and said that there had been a large lightning bolt and she wondered if perhaps it had caused the power outage. Rebekah let us know that all of the power was out at the other houses, the airport, and most of the neighborhood. I wondered what we were going to do about making dinner for the dozen guests, but they had everything in hand. Luckily Rob had made the brownies for dessert that morning, and the planned dinner of burgers and hotdogs was easy to do on the barbecue. We heated up the beans over coals, and the already cooked macaroni casserole was heated up on the side burner of barbecue. By the time the guests showed up for dinner, the rain had passed and the wind had died down, so we were able to set up tables outside where it was lovely and sunny, a very impressive feat! We had been told the power would probably be restored around 830, but by 6 o’clock it was back on and we were able to clean everything up with ease.

Later, when I was sitting outside the front door watching the sunset, the horses all came up and started making their way through the irrigation canal, heading to their evening spot on the other side of the property. It is such a treat to be able to sit and see such a gorgeous site just outside the door. We had a spectacular sunset as well.