Start from 35 curated places around Cody, WY, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Trailhead
A downtown kitchen from Cody-native chef Nathan Kardos that leans on regional ranchers and a wood-fired oven, with a menu shifting from bison bolognese and elk medallions to scratch pasta and pizza. It is where locals go when they want a real dinner rather than a tourist photo.
8th Street at the Ivy
The closest thing in Cody to a white-tablecloth dinner, set inside the Ivy Inn a few blocks from the Buffalo Bill Center. The kitchen does contemporary American plates with a local wine and craft-beer list, and regulars rate the brussels sprouts and old fashioneds.
Trails & outdoors
Beck Lake Bike Park
About ten miles of purpose-built trails behind town, from a paved lakeside walking loop to flow lines, a pump track, and jumps that scale from beginner rollers to advanced drops. It is the easiest place near Cody to get outside without driving into the mountains.
Paul Stock Nature Trail
A gravel nature path below the hospital that rolls through dense riverbank vegetation along the Shoshone, quieter and more wooded than the paved trail beside it. Short, shaded, and good for an easy morning leg-stretch.
Things to do
Cody Nite Rodeo
A nightly summer rodeo running since the 1930s, with bull riding, steer wrestling, and barrel racing under the lights at Stampede Park on the edge of town. It is the genuine article rather than a staged show, and it runs every evening through the season.
The Cody Cattle Company
A Western-themed dinner-and-show barn doing an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet with live cowboy music before the rodeo. It is built for families and works as an easy combo with the Nite Rodeo right next door.
Landmarks & sights
Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Five museums under one roof covering Plains Indians, Western art, natural history of the Greater Yellowstone, and one of the deepest firearms collections in the country. Admission is good for two days, which you will want because rushing it in an afternoon means skipping half of it.
Old Trail Town
Two dozen original frontier buildings hauled in from across Wyoming and Montana and reassembled along a dusty main street, including a cabin once used by Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. The mountain man Jeremiah Johnson is buried here, and the whole place feels lived-in rather than staged.