Devil's Tower and Little Bighorn

Travelled 3 states today: South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. Started out on highway 14 to Devil's Tower to #112. Both lovely roads with interesting scenery and curves. Good pavement and fast roads with hardly any traffic. Devil's Tower was America's first national monument and is as impressive as it was in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Did not see any aliens but we kept a lookout for them. We did see a variety of wildlife today: coyote, wolf (we think), deer, antelope, sharp tailed grouse, bald eagle and buffalo. We had a close encounter with the deer. It leaped out directly in Erik's path and it was good he was alert. Then it hopped the fence. So agile and beautiful. Later a bald eagle flew low down by Erik's Triumph. What a thrill! We took the #212 at Alzada to Little Bighorn with the speed limit of 70 mph. Straight road through dry flatland with sagebrush and cattle. Lots of rattlers out there I think. Erik found this a boring road but I thought it was quite beautiful as the prairie fascinates me. This stretch was so lonely and isolated. Life for homesteaders here must have been a challenge. Miles of road go by without seeing any sign of human activity. Ate at a roadside diner (the only one in a hundred miles with a for sale sign on the door and a wasp trap hanging in the front door) and felt transported in time/space. The waitresses must have been in their 90's and the tables and chairs were mismatched furniture from the 50's. Some folks were in full camouflage complete with matching hats, some could have been the cast from Deliverance, and some were stereotyped cowboys. Food was questionable. Little Bighorn, the site of Custer's last stand, was well planned and the interpretive centre was respectful to both the first nations and the 7th Calvary. The paved road twists throughout the battlefield and is designed to show the timeline and strategy of the two days in the Spring of 1876. Markers show where the participants fell, and this truly illustrates the intensity of the battle. We had the best fry bread and cherry pie, ever, at the trading post just before the turnoff .
Then the brutal wind came and it was a battle to hold the road and get our carcasses to Billings. Not quite as hot today with a high of 29.