Day 27 Week 4

Had another great day today. First off, I went to the Devils Tower National Monument. Very impressive big rock sticking up out of the ground all by itself. It looks exactly like it did in Close Encounters.

From there, I continued on to the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument. Unbelievable! I’ve said it before but I will say it again, I can read the books, watch the shows and study the maps but until I walk the fields, I really can’t get a good appreciation for what happened. It makes it all so much clearer being here.  I was also very lucky in that I was the only visitor here while I was here today.

It is such an eye opener to see the white grave markers dotted all over the 5 mile long battle field. Up on Last Stand Hill, Custer’s marker is the one with the black shield to identify it from the others. He actually fell about 6 feet from the centre of the stone monument at the very top of the hill, right behind my right elbow. They placed his marker and a couple of others downhill a bit with the others to be within the fenced area and to make way for the stone monument.  A few years after the battle, they exhumed all the bodies that had been buried where they had fallen and placed them in a mass grave directly under the stone monument on Last Stand Hill. Custer’s remains where taken back and buried at West Point.

After the battle, 39 Cavalry horses that had been shot for breastworks during Custer’s Last Stand, where found amongst the dead on Last Stand Hill. In 1879, 3 years after the battle, the army built a temporary monument out of timber. The battlefield, strewn with horse skeletons was policed and the remains were placed inside the wooden monument. In 1881, the army reinterred the Cavalry horse skeletons and placed the more permanent stone marker where it still stands today. They lined the new mass grave with the timber from the original monument.

The way the Park Service have laid out the self guided tour, you can drive 5 miles out to where the battle first started with Major Reno attacking the Indian Camp and follow the whole situation as it unfolded. Right to the climax of the battle at Last Stand Hill.

I finally got to see my first Rattlesnake today also.  At the beginning of the tour, 5 miles out, I approached the interpretive sign on the left of the picture below and just lent on it to read it when this rattlesnake came out to the right from somewhere near my feet and made for the garbage bin on the right. Before I had time to get my camera turned on it was under the bin and hiding. I had to push the bin up to get a photo of it. It’s not very clear but you can make it out ok. Just click on the pictures to make them bigger as usual.

So, tonight I am in a little place called Columbus Montana. Just west of Billings. I will attempt to ring my Dad’s mate Terry tomorrow and try to organise a time to meet him in Spokane, Washington. Depending on how that goes, I may or may not duck down to Yellowstone National Park for a look. I am about to cross the Rockies again and from what I can see in the distance, they look pretty covered in snow. Could be interesting.