Deadwood to dead General

We ended up spending an entire week in Whislter Gulch RV park in Deadwood.  They had very good wifi.  We parked right next to the bathrooms where the wifi repeater was mounted.  Win-Win!   The long week gave us a chance to catch up on bills, blogs and rest.  This full-time vacation stuff is tiring.

And look who pulled in right across the street from us… another Jayco Precept.  His was a 35 footer and brand new!

 

We did do a little more touring around while there. We took a day trip over to the Devils tower in Wyoming.  There were signs of alien contact all over the place… if you know what to look for.  I tried to explain some of these signs to others on the hiking path, but alas, some people are just too closed minded to see!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Indians believed the tower was created by a huge bear trying to capture and eat young children.  The great bear clawed the grooves seen today in the walls of the mountain.

 

Once done in Deadwood, we headed for Custer’s Last Stand.  We stayed at an RV campground called 7th camp.  It was literally less than a mile from the “action”.  From our campsite we could see where Bentine and Reno held out while Custer, just a few miles north, was getting whacked.

We arrived Saturday afternoon and had time to drive in the Harden, MT and watch a local rodeo.  Bronco busters, team roping, barel racing and mutten busting.  The coolest thing was watching one bronco buster’s dismount.  Once his time was up he waited for the horse to give one more big buck and let himself be shot off the horse, straight into the air and land on his feet as the horse bucked away.  That was one cool cowboy!

We were just lucky that we hit town, GarryOwen MT, on the 139th anniversary of the Last Stand.  The annual Crow Native Days Pow-Wow was in full swing and we stopped in to watch some traditional dance, hear wise words from elders and watch children shoot each other with ray guns and silly string.  For a time we were standing behind Crow Royalty as we watched the dancers.

It was also our last chance to get to watch a live re-enactment of the initial battle of the little bighorn on the very sight where it took place.  Initially on June 25th 1876 Custer and his men attempted to cross the little bighorn river but was repelled by Indians across the river.  A small battle took place and Custer moved up to the hill that is now famous as the last stand.  The re-enactment was a lot of fun.  The fact that it was approximately 900 degrees (give or take) out in the sun on the bleachers made it a little less fun.  After the re-enactment was complete the audience was invited to mingle with the cavalry and warriors on the field and even to take a dip in the little bighorn to cool off.  It was a great experience.

Monday we checked out a little local museum in Harden.  The picture of the old school house brought back painful memories.

But they had a lot of neat, old buildings and stuff on the property…

Filler Up Mister??

Next on to Bozeman, MT for 2 nights at a “so-so” KOA.  Bozeman is a cute little college town.  We spent most of one day driving around and hiking up near Hyalite Reservoir.  Outside of Bozeman, up in the mountains would be a great place to live.

Along the hyalite trail we followed the creek…  here we go…

and saw a couple of waterfalls.  The water was ice cold.

The hike wasn’t too difficult…

 

The picture is not so great, but I’m standing on the arch of Arch Waterfall.  The water is pouring down right in front of me and blasting through a hole in the rock below me and out to the creek behind me… it was impressive.

Another great action shot… fording the mighty raging river! And freezing again…  I hope you can see me in this pic, those camouflaged shorts really do the trick!  I’m right in the middle of the picture at the end of that big log in the river… yeah.

Well time to leave KOA and spend a night in Walmart in Helena, MT.  While in Helena we visited the Helena City Mountain Park (or something like that… it was high on a mountain overlooking the city).

It was hot and dry.  A hot night in the RV too.  The Walmart parking lot was full of RV’ers.  Must have been a dozen or more.

We were planning on spending the next night in Great Falls, but Tina found a campground on the Missouri River at Holter Lake.  It seemed like a decent little campground so grabbed a site early in the day (another hot-hot Montana day!).

After getting setup we grabbed the jeep and took a long dirt road drive through the back country.  Here’s an idea of what we saw.

 

Later we hopped in the Missouri River for a fun game of fetch… C’mon, you’re supposed to bring it back…

 

Later we sat in our campground and watched dear travel back and forth across that ravine feeding and resting in the shade.  We didn’t get on our computers or phones once while watching the wonders of nature (after we confirmed there was absolutely no cell coverage up here!)

Well, we left Holter State park and had lunch in Great Falls, then continued on to Shelby MT, where we stayed on the 4th of July night.  July 5th we head into Canada and up to Banff for four nights!  Should be fun!

Editors Note: Tina would like it known that she is not allowed to read or edit my posts before they are posted.  She tries to be the first to read them and inform me of egregious spelling and grammar mistakes before too many readers have read it ( oops spelled egregious wrong… see spell check found it!), but that seldom does any good.  😉