Friday, September 16, 2011 Bozeman, Montana
6:50 am
The temperature is +10 C, with a high predicted of +21 C. There is a light rain falling at the moment.
7:00 PM Life
Today was a combination of driving to a new location with a couple of stops to see some tourism highlights.
We began the morning with breakfast in Bozeman and then drove to Billings (our eventual destination) but continued east without stopping to see Pompeys Pillar. As the primary tourist season is over there was a message to say that one should pay at the information building rather than at the entrance. Since we could see the pillar from the parking area and since we had no desire to take the path to the top, we decided to take a couple of photos and leave. This saved us $7.
We then drove south to the highlight of the day, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. It was very impressive.
Although I was aware of the general history of the battle, I was not familiar with much of the detail. In particular I had no idea of the role of chief Crazy Horse. I bought 3 books that I hope to read in the near future.
- "The Last Stand" (2010) by Nathaniel Philbrick.
- This is a New York Times bestseller that gives a general history of the battle.
- "Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life" (2006) by Kingsley M. Bray.
- This will satisfy my interest in learning more about this figure.
- "Archaelogy, History, and Custer's Last Battle" (1993) by Richard Allan Fox.
- I recall seeing a program on television about this effort to reconstruct the details of the battle from the archeological evidence. This should give me a sense of this perspective.
We then returned to Billings and checked in to our motel. There was a railway bar a couple of blocks from the motel so we walked over and had a couple of beers. The bar tender was very helpful and introduced me to two popular draft ales that are brewed in the north-west. The first was "Dead Guy" (Oregon) and the second was "Trout Slayer" (Missoula). Both were excellent, of course. I will definitely try ordering Dead Guy again when the opportunity presents itself. While sipping the ales we watched a heavy metal band set up their equipment for a gig that evening. It was fascinating. The amount of technology and the size of the numerous speakers looked like it would overwhelm the relatively small area for an audience. It will certainly damage their ear drums. We left before the action began, also of course.