"I Am 60" Tour, Day 3: to Little Bighorn and Billings, Montana -June 22, 2017

After a good night's sleep, we got up at 8:30. I did my morning stretching before we went down to breakfast an hour later. I had a pre-made Western omelet that wasn't bad.

When we went out to the car, we saw orange mud tracks in the parking lot and were shocked to see they led to our car. It had to have been from the road under construction last night, but you would have thought that riding on I 90 would have gotten rid of it.
At 10:31, we headed out with the odometer at 1952 and the car telling us it was 66 degrees. The sky was so incredibly blue. It was the kind of blue that you'd swear was fake, if it weren't for the fact that there was so much of it. I got very excited, when just over fifteen minutes and 14 miles later, we got our first sighting of snow-capped mountains. I love the mountains and snow-capped ones are just the best!

 

The terrain in general just fascinated me. We kept my phone and my camera in the console, so that my daughter could use them at will to capture something that interested me. There was very little in the way of cars, let alone traffic, so I could easily slow down from the 80 mph speed limit to let her get a better shot. We stopped for 11 minutes at 11:06 (1987) at the Powder River rest area to get some good shots. We pulled into a parking area at 11:35 (2007) for 5 minutes for camera work on mountain pictures. And, again, at 11:47 (2014), we stopped for 4 minutes in another parking area. My daughter was most agreeable to all these stops, which I appreciated.

    

She started going through the AAA book, looking for a likely place to stop for lunch. She chose a place in Sheridan, Wyoming, and we turned off our GPS, while she used Google maps to get us to the restaurant. When we reached the downtown area, we found it to be charming, with many sculptures on street corners and along the sidewalks. The building looked old, but in good repair. It seemed like a pleasant small town.

       

She'd chosen Frackelton's, which occupied a corner, and we arrived at 12:28 (2053). It was much fancier inside than I had expected, but we did not feel out of place in our shorts. We did skip the alcoholic beverages. We chose two different entrees and split them, so that we'd each get to taste two items. The Steak Sandwich was none too cheap at $17, but it was tasty. The Original Bar and Grill Burger was $12, more expensive than the name implied. It was done to perfection and we loved the Sweet Potato Fries that we paid $1 extra for. The waiter, who was quite attentive, brought us the truffle mayo that is usually served with them, but we felt they didn't need anything. We couldn't resist splitting a Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake ($8), and we were glad we hadn't!

   

 Full and satisfied, we left at 1:47 and it was a warm 75 degrees. At 2:12 (2077), we crossed into Montana. Their welcome sign was so perfect, that it almost blended into its background.

We drove through the Crow Agency for a bit, seeing no towns. At 2:48 (2121), we reached Little Bighorn National Battlefield, which cost $20. It was still sunny and very windy as we made our way to the rest room. We then headed for the visitors' center, when we passed a bus about to take a tour. The Apsalooke (Crow) guide invited us to join them in a tour that was about to start at 3. I hurried in to pay the $10 each and my daughter ran back for water. She didn't get hats, because we were told, we'd be on the bus. We did get out for a short while at Reno's defenses, but it was so windy that hats would have been a problem.

The tour was terrific, a "must see". The guide, whose birthday was the same as mine and the same as the first day of the battle, did a terrific job of explaining the events that led up to the battle, as well as the battle itself. We learned, for instance, that the site was in unclaimed Indian territory at that time and that the Indians had been ordered out by an order signed by President Grant. They'd been given a certain amount of time, but that was set before the terrible winter before the battle caused scarcity of food and made moving difficult. The Crow had been scouts for the army, so hearing about it from them was good. Nothing I heard changed my mind about what a jerk Custer was. I felt his battle plans were lacking and that he was a coward for seeking to grab women and children as bargaining chips. Thanks to him, his brother-in-law, nephew and two brothers were among the dead. The Indians were fighting for their way of life. I was impressed by the distance that the army covered to get there. It is a beautiful area.

There was a jerk on the tour, who thought he knew everything. He kept interjecting details. When he said that Sitting Bull said, "Today is a good day to die," the guide said he hadn't, that no Indian believed that and that it was a mistranslation. I was working up to telling the guy to just shut up, when he actually did. At the end of the 1 hour tour, my daughter and I sincerely thanked the guide, gave him a $5 tip and apologized for the jerk.

We then got our hats and my cane and walked up Last Stand Hill. 

The view of the surrounding countryside was terrific. A camera crew was filming an interview up there and you had to work around them. At one point, though, the guy on camera yelled at some folks to get off the square with the obelisk, because it was a grave. There was a small sign on the surrounding raised concrete telling you to stay off, but I thought that it, like the area where Custer fell, should have been fenced off.

You can tell this is old; it says the cavalry was "besieged", as if they were the victims.

 

The Little Bighorn River is that patch in the woods:

 

 The army came through this pass.

 They had put markers were the soldiers fell, with names if known, and later put these stones:

 Custer's nephew, Boston Custer, was a civilian and fell on the right:

 Custer's marker is the black one. Contrary to the Memorial sign, he was a Lt. Colonel at his death:

 

We then moved over to the other side of the hill to the circular Indian memorial that was dedicated in 2003. On the walls inside, all the tribes involved that day are listed, as well as chiefs, and the dead. There are quotes from various leaders, too. The sculpture on one side is really cool.

I liked the markers for the fallen Indians that we passed on our way to the memorial:

 

This really shows what a liar Custer was and that he got exactly what he was told he would get:

We took the time to go inside to look at the small museum and the good-sized shop. We decided not to walk through the Custer National Cemetery that was part of the site.

At 5:37, we got in the car and drove across the road to the Custer Battlefield Trading Post. Finding nothing that we wanted to buy, we were on the road at 5:52.

It wasn't long before we were driving through Billings and along the Yellowstone River. I do wish we could have photographed the cliffs of that. There were lots of petrochemical and other unidentified industries along our route. 

Needing gas, at 6:46 (2185), having driven 326.6 miles on this tank, we got off at Exit 447 of I 90 and stopped at a Holiday station and got 11.508 gallons at $2.339 each, which was slightly cheaper than home. We chose this station, because it was near our Hampton Inn for the night. At 6:55, we found a parking spot around the side, as the front entrance was undergoing renovation and reconstruction.We took  our things up to room 219, which my daughter had picked on the app earlier in the day, and set to picking a place for dinner.

Since she doesn't get to one often, at 7:23, we headed for Cracker Barrel, arriving at 7:32 (2190), having gone a circuitous route passing agricultural fields, thanks to Google. I got my favorite, the Grilled Chicken Salad for $8.99, while my daughter went for the summertime special, Campfire Chicken for $9.99. Both were delicious, but hers came with a lot more food than she expected.

 

 We roamed around the shop for a few minutes, before leaving at 8:23. It was really much colder and the sky was partially overcast. We got back to the hotel at 8:32 (2192) and it was a chilly 66 degrees.