Little Big Horn/Custer's Last Stand

 After a beautiful drive thru Spearfish Canyon scenic drive we were on our way to Yellowstone!  Driving the RV and traveling with dogs always takes longer and it seemed to take forever to reach out destination. We drove well into the evening on a 2 lane road through Reservation Land.  Beautiful open spaces!  We settled in for the night at a Love's truck stop with plans to visit Little Big Horn in the morning. 

Oliver and Valor have become best buddies on this trip and they keep each other company on the long drives.

We arrived at the battlefield when it opened and quickly joined in on a ranger talk about Custer's Last Stand.  It was well presented and very informative.  This battle was the 2nd and last victory of the American Indian. It memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the Northern Plains Indians to preserve their ancestral way of life.  Here in the valley of the Little Bighorn River on 2 hot days in June in 1876, more than 260 soldiers and attached personnel of the U.S. Army met defeat and death at the hands of several thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors . In 2001 the park name was changed from Custer Battle Field to Little Bighorn Battlefield after protests by the Indians.  This battlefield is also the only cemetery in the world where grave markers are placed where the soldiers fell.  We walked the fields and imagined what it must of been like during that time.  There is also a memorial for the fallen Indians which in my opinion was nicer than the monument for the U.S. soldiers.

We still had several hundred miles to travel to Yellowstone and it was very hot, so by noon we were on our way!