Day 11

We woke up and headed to the Memorial for the Battle of Little Bighorn.  We were able to get in with our national park pass which was nice.  It was very hot but we were early so there was lots of RV parking still.  We walked around the museum area then sat down for a talk about the battle.  The ranger giving the talk was a former history teacher and was excellent.  We learned a lot and really enjoyed it.

We then went on a cemetery walk with another ranger who was from the Crow nation.  We only lasted about 15 minutes with her before we moved on because it wasn’t as interesting.  We hiked up to the memorial.  Then we went over to the memorial for the Native Americans who fought there as well.  Someone once told me that you will never see a marker by itself because soldiers would crawl to one another thinking that no man should ever have to die alone.  I’m not sure who told me that or if it’s true but you didn’t find makers alone.  It is one of only 3 battle fields in the world that has makers where people were actually killed and buried.  The natives took their dead back and buried them after the fight so there is no way to know exactly where they perished.

We then got back on the road and headed in to Montana.  Michael started getting a migraine about 30 minutes outside of Butte so I took over.  Of course I had to drive the part with the highest climb yet.  The engine heated up but then cooled right back down.  My Vue is doing pretty well so far.

The campground wasn’t great but it worked for the night.  The guy who runs it had some interesting stories.  He told us he lived on a Scientology Commune outside of Cooperstown NY after Vietnam.  I have never heard of one existing before so I plan researching that in the car today.  There was really nothing in town as far as food goes (we are going to do my birthday dinner another night) so we decided to try to the Pizza place.  It was reasonably priced and pretty good.  As we were leaving we found out that Man Vs. Food (show on the travel channel) had been there and eaten a 5 pound Stromboli in an hour.  Tomorrow Kalispell.