Saturday, September 29, 2007
Little Bighorn Motel & RV Park, Crow Agency, MT - Aug 25-26
This is a very run-down RV park attached to a motel that you wouldn't check into if you value your health. We arrived with our holding tanks full, and after checking in were pointed towards the dump station, which started overflowing after we had dumped less than a third of our black tank. Since we were spending most of our time away from the trailer, we managed to get by. An hour after setting up, we loudly discovered that we were less than 100 yards from a train track used regularly by coal trains, day & night. This is a result of the Gillette (WY) area surface coal mines prospering from the "energy boom".
Our park was very convenient to Little Bighorn Battlefield NM, formerly Custer Battlefield NM. Backing away from a totally anglo-centric viewpoint, the Monument memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the Northern Plains Indians to preserve their ancestral way of life. This includes an Indian Memorial with the theme "Peace through Unity".The next day we took one more drive to Bighorn Canyon NRA, this time visiting the northern end. Our day got off to a good start as we were treated to an upland sandpiper crossing the road in front of us just out of town, a lifer for us.
We continued seeing lots of wildlife as well as a number of fishermen enjoying the tranquil Bighorn River below the 525-foot high Yellowtail Dam (named after former Crow tribal chairman Robert Yellowtail). The Visitor Center presents a spectacular view of the dam, and the road to Yellowtail Bay offers great views of the rolling plains of Montana, as well as a Four Winds Monument celebrating Crow beliefs. We took the longer route back to Crow Agency, enjoying more scenery before dropping a couple of bucks at the local casino and then happily reuniting with our cats.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 1:24 PM 
