Wyoming Museum Rated Bus Riders Favorite

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By Penny Preston

Story Published: Jan 8, 2012 at 7:23 PM MDT

Story Updated: Jan 9, 2012 at 2:18 PM MDT

CODY, WYOMING – In 2010 a national motorcycle association chose Northwest Wyoming’s Beartooth Highway as the best ride in the country.

Now, the National Tour Association says the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody is one of the group travelers’ favorite museums in America. The BBHC rates with the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Art Museum.

As the cameras click, the model seems unphased. She’s not an international fashion model, but she is a model nonetheless. Suli the turkey vulture is posing for museum brochures, ads, and web videos. Suli and Haya, the peregrine falcon, are part of the new Greater Yellowstone Raptor Experience at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

One of the five museums at the BBHC is being overhauled. The Buffalo Bill Museum reinstallation is set for a reopening in summer 2012. But, even before the raptors and the new museum can debut, a National Tour Association survey has named the BBHC one of the favorite museums for group travelers in America.

BBHC CEO Bruce Eldredge said, “You know when you are placed in the same league as the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Museum of Natural History, all great East Coast institutions, and then the other one is the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in a town of 9,000 people, that was the surprise.”

Park County Travel and Tourism Marketing Director Claudia Wade said, “The National Tour Association is a sterling organization, and when it comes to group travel and motorcoach travel, when a group like that endorses a museum, it really means something.”

It’s good for Cody because the town depends on an estimated one million visitors who pass through on their way to or from Yellowstone. Eldredge said, “We get over three hundred, three-hundred-fifty bus tours a year. So we’re averaging 15,000 visitors who come by motorcoach to visit the museum.”

The BBHC hopes to score with the NTA again in 2012. They’re working to make that happen. Wade remarked, "To be in company with some of those other museums that are in the top ten, it is just staggering."

The National Tour Association membership represents more than 40 countries, 1,500 tour operators, and 600 destinations.

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