Today we arrived in Cody, Wyoming via Salt Lake City for our annual fly fishing trip with Guy Highland from North Fork Anglers. I think this is our fifth year here, but given how times flies, it may be longer. I’ll have to fact check it.

Jeff and I are staying at the Chamberlin Inn which is a great boutique hotel in the heart of downtown Cody. We’re in room 18, where Ernest Hemingway stayed on October 16, 1932. I think he has been everywhere.

Cody hotel log signed by Ernest Hemingway

We ate lunch in Pamplona, Spain at a place he frequented, toured his house in Key West (and went to multiple bars he is reported to have drank in), and in September we’re staying in a hotel in Kobarid, Slovenia that was a hospital during WWI and where, it is said, Ernest Hemingway recuperated from injuries he suffered during the war. That part may be true, but I KNOW he did not write “A Farewell To Arms” while he was there even though the hotel website says he did. I just read a version with notes that indicated it was written well after WWI, I think in the 1920’s. Oh well.

At any rate, in our hotel room is a copy of a letter from a travel journalist who researched Mr. Hemingway’s time spent in the Cody area. It is reported that “Hemingway loved Wyoming and told friends that the best fishing in the world is at the Clarks Fork Branch of the Yellowstone.” We’re heading there tomorrow, so we’ll see if it’s true.