Day 21 - Battle of the Little Big Horn

I am writing this as we head across Kansas on Day 22, so I will update the site with pictures tonight.

Anyway, we had a comfortable night in Billings and got up in the morning to head south towards Colorado, with a short sidetrip to the Battle of the Little Big Horn Memorial. It is a part of the National Park Service, so in we went on Jimmy's Golden Age Passport. I don't know how much he spent on that pass when he and Garrie made one of their trips to Virginia, but I suspect it paid for itself many times over on this trip. The only national park where we had to pay any entrance fee was the one in Alberta, Canada. I guess it makes sense that they would not honor a US National Park Service pass.

Anyway, the Little Big Horn Memorial is just off interstate 94 in Montana. We had missed it on the way out because the highway we had planned to take was under construction and we had to take a detour that caused us to enter Billings 40 miles north of the site. I guess I didn't really kmow what to expect - not being a really big history buff. But, we parked the RV and cranked the generator for the kitties and off we went.

The site is a national cemetery. I believe the ranger told us that the cemetery had been closed 12 or 15 years. Basically, that means that it had reached capacity with veterans who wished to be interred there. We pulled up to the visitor center just as they were starting a 17 minute video to give the history of the battle. Quite frankly, I didn't follow it really well, but Jimmy said it was very well done. I did get the point that Custer was outmanned, outmaneuvered, and just plain out old fashioned beaten at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Once we watched the video, we strolled up the hill toward the two monuments. Shortly after the actual battle, soldiers who had been with the army which launched the attack, but separated from the main body, came onto the field of battle and saw the dead. They buried the soldiers in shallow graves and marked the graves. Two years later, all of the bodies were dug up and reinterred under a monument which stands on a hilltop overlooking the battlefield. The native Americans had not lost so many, but the monument to their dead was not erected until much later (I'll look up the actual date and put it in here as soon as I can). The National Park was originally named for General Custer. Under the senior Bush administration, the name was changed to the Battle of the Little Big Horn, thus honoring all who fought and died there. On the hillside between the original monument and the visitor center are crosses marking the original graves of many of the soldiers. The ranger (who, by the way was Native American - Crow Nation) told us that Custer had actually died at a place at the foot of the monument, but his marker had been moved as it was feared that tourists would carry off pieces of the marker (the area is surrounded by a fence). Of course, many of the officers who were killed at that battle are not interred in the mass grave, but were returned to be buried at a site selected by their families. General Custer is buried at West Point.



After we left the park. we headed the RV south. We got to Wellington, CO and spent the night. They have lots of black flies!!! Luckily I had a package of Corky's BBQ in the freezer, so we had that for dinner, watched a little NASCAR, and hit the sack.