In order to do research for The Butterfly Cage, Joe and I took a trip to Wyoming. This was in the middle of a typical hellishly hot Florida summer so it was a revelation to wake up in the morning in a small Wyoming town and have to put on a sweater! Sheer bliss.
We flew into Denver International, rented a car and drove up to Casper, Wyoming, with a stop for lunch in cute Fort Collins. Great bookstore! Outside of Casper we went to the Douglas Railway Museum. Below is a picture of a typical dining car back in the 1910s. Rail travel would have been a huge step up from wagons and horse-drawn coaches. Frankly, it’s still my favorite way to travel.
It was such a thrill to sit in an actual Pullman passenger car from the 1910s– the same kind Louisa would have been in on her way out west to meet the Prince of Monaco. Dig those lamps hanging from the ceiling!
Research can sometimes be frustrating. I wanted to be as accurate as I could be about the route my characters would have traveled but it’s hard to find old railroad maps on the Internet. In Douglas I found the jackpot! I was so pleased that the museum displayed these maps!
After Jasper we drove West. At one point we were in a town that literally had one gas station and one post office when the state patrol stopped to check up on us. “Better make sure you fill up,” he said. “There’s not another station for 200 miles.” We gassed up.
Next we went to Cody, Wyoming. The coolest thing about Cody is the Irma Hotel, established by Buffalo Bill Cody himself and named after his daughter. This is the same hotel where the Prince of Monaco stayed before and after his 1914 hunting trip. (Well, the museum is cool, too. I’ll talk about it in the next newsletter.)
The current proprietors have kept the old timey vibe. Below is the bar downstairs in The Irma. It was donated by Queen Victoria!
If you’re curious about the title of this newsletter, I changed the line from a poem by e.e. cummings — the great poet who didn’t use capital letters or punctuation.
