Yesterday, we rose early for our 6:30 AM flight to Portland, OR. I love flying over the mountains and was fortunate to have a window seat.
PDX is a nice place to spend two hours, have a bit of breakfast and then board the next flight to Boseman, MT, again, flying over the mountains.
We covered the mountains twice by air in one day and will cover them by ground through the next two weeks. After wrangling our rental car we loaded up and headed further west through amber waves of grain.
We were weary but happy campers to arrive in Cody to lodge for the next two nights. We headed into town and after stumbling on the boot store Wayne founded the year after my birth we settled in next to the mantle in the Saloon of the Irma Hotel for taco salads.
Walking outside this morning I commented to Wayne, “Someone is burning a fire very early.” We smelled smoke in the air and indeed there was. Turns out, the Fishhawk Fire west of Cody and inside Yellowstone had expanded to over 4,500 acres overnight. The sky doesn’t lie.
We headed out to Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, a World War II Japanese Confinement Site. We became aware of it through a piece on CBS Sunday Morning.
The “camp” consisted of 467 barrack-style buildings sectioned into 20 blocks that served as administration areas and living quarters. The tarpaper barracks were divided into apartments, some single rooms and others slightly larger to accommodate families of up to six.
Here, an historical picture showing just a few of the barracks.
I don’t know how a picture in a frame inside a museum could honestly portray the vastness, but today I was able to stand in much the same place with an expanded view. As far as your eye could see was filled with barracks housing close to 11, 000 American citizens shortly after an American president authorized their deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942.
While much of the land is now in private hands due to homesteading there are almost no structures in sight. The capaciousness overwhelms as no video, storyboard, or display case could possibly rise to.
The first visual after pulling off the gravel road is of a guard tower, light pole, and the chimney of the hospital steam plant.
The opening statement, uneasy indeed.
The main facility houses a meditation room and garden overlooking a field of sunflowers towards Heart Mountain.
The acres of grounds offer silent viewpoints.
Later back at the hotel I went out for a walk, the smoke now thicker.
After just walking a block, I stood in the middle of a neighborhood intersection and took a picture. Then turned 180 degrees for the next shot.
After dinner we walked out on the porch to find a staged gun fight in the street.
They certainly have some interesting bar stools at Irma’s hotel.
Surviving the shoot out, we decided to take a chance on the Buffalo Bill dam still being open for viewing. It wasn’t but we were traveling on the same highway we are taking tomorrow. It may be an interesting trip!
We will be traveling the highway which is the squiggly, northern border of the Fishhawk Fire Closure Zone along the north fork of the Shoshone River.
This sums up the day.
