Experience Americas Most Treasured Roads
Touring the Byway
4 Days / 3 Nights | Gateway City: Cody, Wyoming
We recommend beginning your journey in Cody, where you can take the historic downtown walking tour, visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and Old Trail Town, before spending the evening at the historic Irma Hotel.
On Day Two, you’ll be off to Greybull, where you can tour the Greybull Museum, the Bighorn Basin Geoscience Center and the Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting, before a night’s rest at the historic Greybull Hotel.
Day Three takes you to the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite and the Medicine Lodge Archeological Site, before traveling to Worland and ultimately to Thermopolis. Here, you can visit the Hot Springs County Museum and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center before enjoying Hot Springs State Park. Spend the night at a local hotel.
Leaving now to return to Cody, you can tour the Legend Rock State Petroglyph and the Meeteesee Museums along the way. Once in Cody, visit the Cody Heritage Museum, By Western Hands Museum and Gallery and enjoy the Dan Miller Country Music Review.
From there, if you’re traveling another Wyoming Scenic Byway, we wish you safe passage, or a safe and pleasant journey home.
View the Detailed Itinerary below to see the full route, which is complete with dining, shopping, and lodging recommendations!
Highlighted Attractions
Red Gulch Dinosaur Track Site
Featuring hundreds of dinosaur tracks, this assemblage of fossil dinosaur footprints was discovered in 1997. It is the largest site in Wyoming and one of only a few worldwide from the Middle Jurassic Period (160 million to 180 million years old). The site features a boardwalk, interpretive signs, picnic tables, benches, and trails. Travel approximately eight miles east of Greybull WY on US Highway 14 to the Red Gulch/Alkali National Back Country Byway turnoff.
Medicine Lodge State Archeological Site
Medicine Lodge is one of Wyoming’s premier archeological sites where rock art, both petroglyphs carved into the work and pictographs, painted on the rock, cover the face of a 750-foot sandstone bluff. It is believed that early residents occupied the site over 10,000 years ago. Interpretive signs along the base of the bluff guide you through the history of the Medicine Lodge site and the surrounding region. The site also includes a 12,000-acre portion of the former Wickwire Ranch that became the Medicine Lodge Wildlife Habitat Management Area.
Wyoming Dinosaur Center
Providing outstanding hands-on geologic and paleontological experiences, WDC displays one of the largest and most unique fossil collections in the world. It is also one of the few dinosaur museums in the world that is near a rich fossil-bearing excavation site. The Thermopolis Specimen of Archaeopteryx is the only real specimen of this genus outside of Europe.
Hot Springs State Park
Government Indian Inspector James McLaughlin negotiated a purchase price of $60,000 for a 100-square-mile portion of the Shoshone Reservation in 1896, but the hot springs portion was ceded through an agreement that allowed them to be open to the public. Hot Springs State Park also features a managed herd of bison (feeding usually at 8:30AM); a suspension foot bridge across the Big Horn River, a mineral terrace, flower gardens and terraces made of naturally forming travertine caused by the flowing mineral hot spring. The springs flow at a constant temperature of 135 °F which is moderated to a therapeutic 104 °F in the State Bath House.
Legend Rock Petroglyph Site
Also a unit of Hot Springs State Park, Legend Rock is 29 miles northwest of Thermopolis. The rock itself is 1,312 feet long near vertical cliff with more than 92 prehistoric petroglyph panels and over 300 petroglyph figures. It has been a sacred site for Native Americans for thousands of years. In order to preserve and protect the site, it was acquired by Wyoming and now encompasses a visitor center and interpretive trails.
To experience all that The Route of Ancient Creatures has to offer, download the complete itinerary!
The detailed itinerary includes:
- A complete trip experience organized in geographic order, to print down and go.
- A full description of the Byway tour.
- Each trip experience begins in a gateway city with commercial flight availability (and often ending in another) to enhance the Byway experience.
- Attractions and activities along the full length of the Byway selected to truly tell the story of the places you visit.
- Detailed description of each attraction and activity, including the address, telephone number, hours of operation, admission fees and suggested time to allow for a visit.
- Accommodations (related to the theme of the Byway or unique to the destination wherever possible) positioned in the correct locations and including breakfast wherever possible.
- Dining suggestions positioned in the correct locations for lunch and dinner.
- All attractions, accommodations and dining locations arranged into Days that allow time for relaxation, savoring meals and enjoying the experience.
- A road trip to create memories and intrigue your mind.