So, a good map overview as to how far we have travelled in the last three days.
A distance of 1235k covered to date. Meaning, we are one sixth of the way there!!!! So far the weather is still hanging in there with clear roads and very minimal traffic.
The Best Western that we stayed in Billings last night was perfectly satisfactory. They even had freshly made cookies on the front reception desk when you booked in which we could have well done without. Around the outside of the hotel where all the beautiful dressage wood had been installed, were a number of black bears climbing over the framework. Quirky and fun.
Whilst cruising down the highway still within Montana, we noticed road signs for Big Horn which kind of rang a bell with us. Out came google and all of a sudden, we realise that we are going to be going past the location of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer’s Last Stand.
This was a definite must see. Also, luckily for us, our American National Parks pass that we purchased last December for our drive down to Arizona was still valid, so that was a definite saving. The exchange rate at present is really lousy and have renamed the loonie as the Arctic Peso.
These gravestones are the actual locations of the fallen soldiers during the battle. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead.
This headstone is for a Native American of which only 31 were killed. The first picture above of the orderly gravestones are for soldiers who were killed in other battles throughout many different campaigns. The cemetery is now closed.
Custer was originally buried here but was dug up a year later and his remains were moved to West Point Cemetery in New York. Custer’s deeds and place in history is debated in historical controversy. His brilliant Civil War record cannot be overlooked nor can his brutal participation in the Indian Wars.
So we reckon that these are pretty smart turkeys making their last stand as they have situated themselves at the memorial site and are fairly safe from the Thanksgiving dinner table which is Thursday week, the 28th November. They aren’t the most good looking of birds and not even that nice to eat unless they are deep fried which is how our good friend Pete cooks them. Really sad to be missing out on his turkey dinner two years in a row.
We then crossed over into Wyoming from Montana. Not a lot of change in scenery. We have been trying to work out how many of the states we have visited and realised we have been to the state of Wyoming before. We did a five-day National Geographic tour of Yellowstone back in February 2009 which we both very much enjoyed and vividly remember just how damn cold it was. We saw a lot of wildlife such as bison, wolves, deer, coyotes and no people as the park is closed in winter except to a few small, guided groups of which we were one.
Our reason for staying in Gillette was to catch up with an old work colleague of ours, Dennis and his wife Debbie. We had a wonderful few hours catching up on one another’s lives and promising that we would not make it another 10 years before we reconnected again.
Rowkin Rovings Blog 