Immediately to the left of the 40 you will see a small white stick in the ground. This is a headstone pinpointing the location where a soldier lost his life. If you look closer throughout the picture, you may be able to see many more of these headstones throughout the Battlefield. Red headstones, which are hard to see here, demarcate locations where Lakotas lost their lives...
This is a very sobering place to be. The top of the Hill in the back has dozens of headstones, where "The Last Stand" took place, and where Custer lost his life. I have by the way all of these pictures in much higher quality, so if you want it, let me know... I can email it...
Beautiful Montana landscape right? If you look closely, you will see several headstones, if you look closer still, towards the ravine on the right... you will see dozens more. Many of these can be seen throughout the five mile road that demarcates the battle lines...
Park personnel have done an amazing job at documenting and respectfully maintaining this place... visit if you can.
The irony is that Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull won the battle, but by Custer losing in the way he did, it accelerated the final concentration of all remaining Tribes in the Reservations. The Lakotas and Dakotas lost a significant percentage of their original Reservation (in South Dakota)... although the Crow now occupy a HUGE expanse of Southern Montana territory as part of the Crow Indian Reservation.
I know it is a novel, but if anyone wants to learn about life in those days, to include Montana... read
Lonesome Dove... or better yet, read the entire series of three books. Can't be put down...
And I finally left for a loooong drive towards Gillette, Wyoming, leaving Montana for the last time. I took the back roads whenever I could, spending a lot of time on US14... it is by the way the way to travel. If one takes the Interstate, one cannot stop!!! Where's the fun then??? The risk? No cell phone signal for a good portion of the ride... oh well...
The picture below is a good representation of today's drive...
And so is the one below... notice the population, and where I was standing... no traffic for looooong periods of time!
And also a lot of this... terrain that I frankly did not expect to see in this part of the country. Seemed like I was in Arizona at times!
And that's it for today... Some of Gillette (self-described as the Energy Capital of the World) and Devils Tower tomorrow...
On the technical side: the temperature in the 40 climbed out of its normal range for the third straight day. It was in the normal range the first few hours, but rose slowly after that. No over-heating... at all... when I shut it down it cranks back up, but the bottom line is that the gauge is settling in a range that it hasn't before. The first two days I assumed it was the altitude, with the misfiring and all that... but now I'm not sure (temperature was in the high 80's today here in the Plains). Something to worry about??? I'm monitoring it like a hawk...
Read and ride along!
Hector
