Montana - Days 25 & 26 - Little Bighorn Battlefield, in Hardin campground

Hardin KOA, Hardin

Thursday, 25 & Friday, 26 August 2022

When I'd finally gotten a phone signal yesterday, I called Jeff, the mechanic, and talked to his wife who handles the phone for him.  I told her what we'd agreed to, that my "check engine" light hadn't stayed gone long, and that I'd planned to be here until Saturday and which day did Jeff think he could come out.  She picked Friday.  So I decided to go visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument on Thursday.

today's route

At the national battlefield:

The visitor center at the battlefield is only about 15 miles or so from the campground, so we got there fairly early.  And yet again I saw signs saying No Dogs.  I'd counted on being able to walk Dext around after I'd gone to the visitor center, so I was seriously disappointed - and I think he was too.

Beginning at the entrance and continuing in the parking area there were many signs stating clearly that large vehicles needed to park over there.  So of course over there is where I went.  But conspicuously, 4 much larger RVs didn't.  They all parked in the section set aside for cars.  

I was busy watching them, astounded by their obliviousness, when I saw someone from the visitor center come tell them to move.  Which they did while complaining about it.  (Huh?  The space for big rigs was just feet away from the car space, unlike places that send us to remote parking areas.)

Then they all got out - couples in each RV, clearly all traveling together - and one of them noticed the sign saying masks were required indoors, at which point several started complaining again - and kept on complaining when they went inside.  The word "entitled" sprang to my mind.  Incredible behavior.  The sort of thing that inspired the "Ugly American" sentiments back in the '60s.

Inside I found plenty of exhibits about the series of events that led up to the well-known battle here, but they didn't seem to be as polished and clear as I'm used to from the National Park Service.  Of course, part of my problem was that these 4 couples were all milling around where I was, all talking loudly and making it hard for me to see and understand the exhibits.  So I've rearranged what I saw in presenting it below, in hopes it makes more sense now than it did to me then.  I've blown these photos up as much as I could, but they presented the information in long lines of text, and that plus the glare on the glass made it hard for me to get all the text into a photo.  And I'll just say in advance the misspellings and typos and odd language choices made me want to volunteer my services to the Park Service to clean these up.

Background:

Wouldn't you have thought the Army would have noticed that 6,000 Indians, including up to 2,000 warriors, had left the reservations?  And had gathered at the Little Bighorn River?  Either their surveillance failed or they underestimated their adversary.  As you'll see below, the military was seriously out-manned.

Campaign Strategy of the US army:

The Powder River engagement:

Preparation by the Sioux and Cheyenne:

Battle of the Rosebud River:

Battle of the Little Bighorn River:

Those numbers refer to notes below.

After the Battle:

a grave marker, like
the one for Custer,
see text above

Odd, really, how Gen. Custer has been so nearly deified by Americans since this battle.  For one thing, he was following orders without figuring out that conditions weren't as his commanding officers expected.  For another, no one still knows exactly where he and his men went after they split off from Major Reno so his heroism seems to rest on the fact that he was killed.  No one seems to note that he and his men were surrounded, which doesn't seem reasonable for an experienced officer like Custer to allow.  And the fact that the original position of the American government was inhumane didn't seem to have bothered him at any point.

Anyway, these exhibits - and you can see how hard they are to read and digest - gave me all the information about this battle I wanted to know.  The fact is that I mostly came here because I was here, and it didn't seem right to leave Montana without having visited this monument.  Sort of the way I felt about Mt. Rushmore (just over the border in SD).

From there, I wanted to find somewhere for Dext to walk, so we went back to the town of Hardin where I'd found a park online.

Hardin:

And the park was there, this time minus signs banning dogs.  Yea!

It was Custer City Park, and we found a monument there.

The plaque says:
"To the memory of General George Armstrong Custer."

On the back of that granite slab was another plaque that was hard to read, even enlarged and cleaned up as I've done here:

Despite this glorification of an Army officer who, in my mind, didn't do anything to deserve it but die in the line of duty (which I agree is something but a whole lot of other people do this without getting parks named after them), this was a very nice park, and Dext and I were happy for the chance to wander around with grass and trees for a change.

We stopped at an IGA on the way back to the campground.

Back in the campground:

On Friday, I had to wait till mid-afternoon before Jeff was able to get there.  And except for a break to go to an auto parts store in town, he worked there for several hours.  He changed 2 of the spark plugs and coils (I think) and cleaned things up a bit, and after he'd gotten done, the RV's computer was registering no problems for a change.  A big relief.

Earlier in the day I'd done some laundry and donated some of the Flathead cherries I still hadn't eaten to the Wisconsin natives who owned the KOA, making me a friend for life it seemed.

This campground is only a mile from town but definitely out in the country, with crops growing in fields all around us.  In fact, the neighbor closest to my campsite started up the irrigation flow for his field and ended up nearly flooding the campground.  I noticed and went to check with the owners that all that water was supposed to be coming in - and they mobilized quickly and got the neighbor to come over and fix the leakage.  So I felt like I'd done my good deed for the day.

For some reason, birds kept flying into the side window, which they don't usually.  I couldn't figure out what to do to make it look less like a flyway to them, and after a while they stopped.  I guess the light changed. 

Once when I looked out that window I saw a bunny hopping with the birds in the dried grass outside the RV.

There were a whole lot of flies around here - and apparently all over MT this time of year.  Major nuisance, and they tend to keep me indoors to avoid them.  Except of course they get inside.  I managed to kill 2 at once, which reminded me of a story from my childhood called "7 At One Blow."  It was about a man who'd killed 7 flies at once and was so proud of himself he made a belt with that slogan on it.  But of course other people thought he meant people, not flies.

I asked the owner about the various facilities I saw across the road.  She said one was a coal-fired power plant that sent all its power to North Dakota and Wyoming, (so the campground across the road got none of it).  She said another was an asbestos plant, and a third had been a sugar factory because sugar beets are a big crop around here.  She said the factory had been moved to Billings and the huge silos I saw stored the sugar beets until they could be transported.  She said all these sugar beets were used in Pepsi and Mountain Dew, and when I saw the word "backlash" on the label, that meant the sugar beets that had been used were these particular local sugar beets.  I'm not sure about that "backlash" part, though I'm sure that's what she said.

I've been noticing lately that when Dext and I get back from walks, and I pat him a lot if/when he's been good (meaning, he hasn't eaten anything), then Lily comes running up to get patted too.  Maybe she was doing that when Gracie was alive and I just didn't realize it because I already had 2 dogs to pat.  But she's definitely doing it now.  It's not like she doesn't get at least her share of attention - but she's just figured out how to get even more.