Goodbye Montana, hello Wyoming

We had a good couple of days here in Montana.  As I said the campground is stupendous with its exceptional views, but baby it is hot!  Over 100 the last two days, still cools off enough at night for open windows though.

Watching the sun set from our site

We had never been to Custer's Battlefield, now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  We also had no real idea of what happened here except for Custer being massacred.  His Last Stand is a very small place, yet the overall battlefield is quite large, funny what you remember or invent from your high school years.  It was so recent I'm sure I remember it all clearly:-)

It is a somber place in the middle of the plains, rolling grasslands as far as you can see, up above the Little Bighorn River.  We listened to a very well done dissertation on the battle from a Park Ranger, then walked over to the Custer National Cemetery,

then up the hill to Custer's Last Stand.

Last Stand.  The large stone rests on the mass grave of the enlisted men who
died here.  The officers were interred elsewhere and Custer is buried
at West Point.  The small markers visible are where the men fell.

Looking down the hill with the markers showing where the men fell

You can see Custer's here in the middle

The battlefield as I said was bigger than we thought, several miles long, and that was part of the problem, no one knew where Custer was as the battle raged elsewhere.  It is well worth a visit if you are in the area.  After that we went over to the Custer Battlefield Trading Post Cafe for lunch.  It was great, the indian fry bread was awesome, a lot like a sopapilla with honey!

Indian fry bread taco 

This is a "Bear Paw", a fry bread taco with everything on the inside!

We then decided to take a big loop around to Rosebud, where some of the hostilities began a few days before.  It was a nice drive but there was little information available, so we took a "shortcut" back.  We went 20+ miles through the plains on a mostly doubletrack path that was really pretty.

The start of our shortcut

Pond along the way

We even saw a black bear and her cub, mom split before we could get a picture

Then as we came around a bend, this group came running down to greet us!

Hey, guys!

The next day we wanted to go see the Yellowtail Dam and Bighorn Recreation Area, the 15th highest dam in the US at 525'.  It is a concrete arch dam that provides power, irrigation, and recreation, with a byproduct of an incredible trout stream below the dam. So we took a look at the map and saw a marked road that cut from near us diagonally over to the dam, Shoulder Creek Road.  I'll tell you what, they have a totally unique take on what a marked on a map road is, wow!  It started off as a dirt track similar to what we drove the day before, but after awhile it became smaller and smaller to the point it was difficult to see it across the plains, and oh, did I mention, we had to open and close 11 gates.

This how the road started, first gate

As we progressed

Remember this is a marked and named road on a map!

It was fun and beautiful, we passed lots of cattle and horses.

They seemed very interested in us:-)

We almost lost the road once as we crested and went down the other side of a hill.

Almost lost it just after this point

Going back after trying to figure out where our road went

Down the other side

After 23 miles, we popped out on hard top and went down to the dam.

Yellowtail Dam

The only drawback is that none of the 71 mile lake that was formed is accessible by vehicle, only boat, but we did drive around, 10 miles, to see the other side of the dam from the marina.

View from the marina side, the haze in the air is smoke, they were burning off their fields

So now we are in Buffalo, WY for a few days.  One of our favorite authors, CJ Box, sets many of his books in this area and describes the surroundings in such detail making it so alluring and interesting that we want to poke around and see it up close.  Also, we may make an effort to go see the actual "Hole in the Wall" where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out.  It's really out in the boondocks so it should be fun!