July 7-8

A bit of parking lot maintenance to tighten up things in Idaho Falls.

The ride today was cold enough for an extra layer under the jackets and the path through Yellowstone uneventful and expectedly slow. But, by keeping to the north/east route, we were able to dodge most of the slow moving traffic.

It was cold and very windy on the top of the Beartooth Mountain, which is at 10,947 ft.

 

Red Lodge MT is much larger and spread out since we last rode through the area. They even have a round-about now for traffic control. However, prices are still too high and service was marginal with most of the restaurants/bars advertising for help.

We used Hwy 212 for most of the next day’s ride to Belle Fourche SD, which, I gotta tell ya was pretty boring. The only thing breaking up the miles and miles of rolling hay fields were glimpses of horses and cows grazing in the mid-day sun.

We did make time to stop at the site of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. The Little Bighorn Monument memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the Northern Plains Indian way of life. Here in 1876, more than 260 soldiers died at the hands of several thousand Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.

While the Indians won the battle (they lost no more than 100), they lost the war against the military & US government’s efforts to end their independent, nomadic way of life as buffalo hunters. Money and gold was behind the reason for the battle.

What had happened was the discovery of gold in 1874 in the Black Hills, which at that time, was in the heart of the new Indian reservation News of the strike spread quickly, and soon thousands of eager gold seekers swarmed into the region in violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty. The army tried to keep them out and even tried to buy the Black Hills from the Indians – with no success. The Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne left the reservation and resumed raids on the new settlers. In December 1875, the commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered the tribes to return to the reservation before January 1876 or be treated as “hostiles.” When the Indians did not comply, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his 7^th Cavalry army were called up to enforce the rules. Hence, the battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876 commenced.

 

 

After the battle, the Indian tribes and families scattered, some going north, some going south. Most of them returned to the reservations and surrendered in the next few years. In 1877, Custer’s remains were reinterred at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.

Lunch today was roadside in the Indian community of Lame Deer as there was nothing else available.

(By-the-way click on any of the pictures if you want to see more detail or get a larger image.)

Home for the next two days is in Belle Fourche SD located on the northern-most portion of the Black Hills National Forest. Belle Fourche (pronounced ‘foosh’ is French for “beautiful fork” and was named by French explorers when this area was owned by France. It is located at the confluence of what is now known as the Belle Fourche and Redwater rivers and Hay Creek. From here one has several choices of day rides; Deadwood, Spearfish, Devils Tower National Monument, and the infamous community of Sturgis.

(For those of you who are reading this narrative and are saying to yourself, “but what about Mt. Rushmore!, the Crazy Horse Memorial!, Custer State Park, Keystone, etc.” let me explain that this is our third visit to the area so we were perfectly okay with staying to the north and not visiting these sites again.)