Americana Day 3
We had a loose schedule that I was intending on keeping. We did OK up till the third day and then the schedule fell into the toilet. I had planned on making it into Yellowstone and seeing about half the park but I seriously misjudged the distances involved. Seriously misjudged them. I didn't seem that far on the map but driving a few hundred miles still takes hours. Oops. My Bad.
We left Rapid City in the morning and went into Wyoming. Went through Sturgis (sorry Tim, we didn't stop. We took pictures from the car) going westbound on Interstate 90.
This was the closest we got to the Museum. But we looked back several time and were still seeing signs for Wall's Drug.
I kept hearing the song from Close Encounters.
This thing is pretty impressive.
As we got closer, we saw Richard Dryfus with a half sunburned face climbing up it.
The local Indians thought that there were some girls being chased by a bear. To protect them, the ground rose. The vertical lines are from where the bear was trying to climb up to get them. Didn't these people discover Peyote?
I think it's actually some kind of volcanic shaft and then the outside of the shaft eroded away. Or at least that's the story I'm sticking to.
Just to prove we were there.
Our weary climbers.
We took a trail that went all the way around it.
This was the spot that we saw Dryfus. Or at least it looked like him.
The thought of going on the 2 mile hike around the mountain seemed a lot better at the beginning than towards the end.
There were colonies of Prairie Dogs all over the place. They seem so cute in the movies.
Up close they are brazen little bastards with rabies. Of course, Kristin wanted one for a pet.
After that, we went up into Montana (I finally got to cross that state of my list of "States I've been to", I've only got three left) and into the Little Big Horn Valley.
Custer's Last Stand.
They have headstones marking the approximate location the the soldiers and Indians fell.
The village that Custer was trying to roust was down in the valley. He didn't intend on attacking them. Only to move them into the Black Hills. That isn't what the Indians thought, though. So they fought back and to everyone's surprise, they won. But that ended up being about the last battle the Indians did win. The government came down pretty hard on them after this. A classic case of winning the battle and loosing the war.
Lame White Man?
Black White Man? Where do they get these names?
An authentic Trading Post, manned by authentic Indians, selling authentic touristy crap.
The houses in the area. You can't tell from the picture but there were no McMansion's in the area.
That night we spent in Billings. I don't know if it was that we were tired or what but when we looked at this tree, it seemed to look back at us.