In just over a month the inaugural Spring Into Yellowstone - Cody Birding and Wildlife Festival will take place. It will be held May 15-19 in and around Cody and features, tours, forums, a trade show and opportunities to view and appreciate Cody's iconic birds and wildlife.

If you go to the event website: www.springintoyellowstone.com, you'll find a host of great tours ranging in cost from free to $100. Most are in the $15-20 range, which make them a fantastic deal. All registrants will be charged a $25 base fee (which includes unlimited access to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West), gets them into all free events and includes some exclusive maps and gifts.

We've deliberately priced the tours and other options so people can afford to enjoy multiple opportunities (and stay multiple days) while in Cody.

We've have a great consortium of partners involved in the event including the Cody Chamber, Draper Museum of Natural History, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Friends of a Legacy, Meadowlark Audubon Society, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

As with any first-year event, our goal is to have a modest success and something we can build on in subsequent years. We already have registrants from Michigan, Florida and North Carolina among other locations. We're promoting the event via traditional advertising outside of Cody and via social media, which has proven to be an effective way of reaching certain interest groups.

If you have social networks or opportunities to promote the event, please consider distributing the website link or adding it to your site so we can get the information out to as wide an audience as possible! If you have questions or wish to register, please call Jill Osiecki Gleich here at the Chamber - 587-2777.

The WYDOT snowplowing crews working in Yellowstone have progressed over 11.6 miles up the East Gate road and have successfully cleared Sylvan Pass. Crew members from Cody and Lovell are working hard to make sure we're open on May 3rd (weather permitting), and we appreciate everything they're doing. We can never thank enough those in the community who contributed to the cause and supported the event. If you didn't see it, this article appeared in the LA Times last weekend. You can also keep track of the plowing progress and view pictures on our Facebook page.

A couple of dates to note on your calendar: the next Business After Hours will be held at one of our newest members, SportsHQ, April 30th from 5-7 p.m. (1355 Sheridan Avenue). Also, our annual Parks Day Cody Club will be held Monday, May 20th at Noon in Cody Auditorium.

Finally, with just three weeks until the East Gate is scheduled to open, now would be a great time to make sure we have your printed materials in our Visitor Center. I'll be highlighting the many new changes we've made for 2013 in the next newsletter, but stop by anytime to see the upgrades.