My morning was a sad one. I did not think I would be so moved by the Little Big Horn Battlefield in Wyoming but I was. It is only a hill with rolling fields surrounding it but off to one side are all these headstones of the soldiers who died on this spot. There was a Ranger who gave a talk in great detail about all the battles and the strategies of both the soldiers and the Indians. He did a marvelous job of making it come alive. He explained how the Indians won the battle but so angered the US government that they sent additional troops. These drove the Indians back to the Reservations and killed Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. There is now a beautiful sculpture in a monument commemorating the Indians. At the end the Ranger claimed he wasn't being political but he made statements that were basically anti-war. He even recommended an anti-war movie.
My afternoon was much lighter. I drove across Wyoming to South Dakota to see the Devils Tower. It is very strange. There are no other hills at all like it anywhere around. It just sticks up in its magnificence. It looks exactly it did in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even the area around it is the same. There are cows in the rolling fields like the ones the knocked out to frighten people.
On the way up to the Tower they have the remnants of a Prairie Dog town. The dogs once covered the whole area but have been hunted out of the larger area. The dogs are just so adorable. They are so used to people that they ignore you no matter what you do. You can take their pictures forever but you worry that they aren't aware of real predators. They are getting too populated and the Rangers are worried about how to control the numbers. Their natural enemy is the coyote but they are hunted by the ranchers who also hate the prairie dogs.
I couldn't blog last night because the hotel was having trouble with their WIFI.
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