Givens Gaggle: Vacation Day 5 (Billings, MT to Spearfish, SD)

Trip Day 5 - (Billings, MT to Spearfish, SD) During the nighttime hours we had a terrific thunder and lightning storm about 3:30 AM. It lasted for 15 – 20 minutes and sounded like it was right outside the motel. Come morning everything looked dry but our car was now really clean thanks to the rain storm. We left about 9:30 for the Little Big Horn Battlefield monument about an hour south east of Billings. This country isn’t spectacular but is very pretty with rolling hills, light tree cover in places and most all the grasses are green. Alfalfa is about the only agriculture here other than the grazing of cattle. The Little Big Horn national monument was very nice – they had a good visitor’s center and we partook of a guided tour of the battle ground led by the Crow Indians (whose reservation we are on.) It was very informative and interestingly from the Indian’s point of view. Of course they stress how past treaties were broken – especially when gold was found in the Black Hills and the Souix were driven from their lands. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were leading a band of mixed Indian tribes that refused to be moved to new reservations. There were between 7 and 8 thousand Indians in this group with 2,000 being warriors. The soldiers had no idea what they were facing, thinking the group was significantly smaller. The Indians were camped along the Little Big Horn River in a camp that stretched from 3 to 5 miles. Custer took his forces and broke them into 3 groups and tried for an encircling effort that totally failed and cost the lives of over 200 Americans. Ironically the Indians won the battle but this brought about the end of their war as the Americans mobilized larger forces after this and squashed the Indians and drove them into their reservations.

This is the beautiful river bottom where the Indians were encamped.

Indian monument located just to the north of Last Stand Hill

Deaths on this battle field are marked with grave markers. Red for Indian deaths.

White for the Americans and in this case their animals.

Large monument for all the Soldiers and others who died here - names are on all 4 sides.

A typical grave for a soldier - we know who died but not where they died in most cases.

This is Custer's marker - near where his body was found - but he is actually buried at West Point, where he graduated near the bottom of his class.

Also located here is a national cemetery which is the resting place for soldiers and close dependents from the Spanish American, First and Second, Korean, and Vietnam wars.

Driving south from Little Big Horn we eventually reached Gillette, Wyoming (the Energy Capital of the United States.) We passed a gigantic refinery on one side of the highway and a huge open face coal mine on the other side of the road. East of town were literally miles of coal trains lined up waiting to be filled. We had passed some on the way to Billings earlier in the day. From Gillette the land leveled out for quite a while into relatively flat grasslands before beginning to climb again as we headed towards the South Dakota border. The land was made prettier as more and more trees were there and the land was a deep red in color. We turned off I-90 near the border and took a side trip to Devil’s Tower – the nation’s first National Monument created in 1906. This 1200 + foot high igneous monolith rises out of the surrounding prairie and is the remains of an ancient volcano. I have wanted to see it since I was a little boy and collected the stamp depicting it.