We stayed in Billings for one more day as after driving 727 miles on Thursday and another 450 to Yellowstone and back - we felt we deserved a rest! Made the most of the day by visiting the Yellowstone Art Museum in downtown Billings which was a small amount of money well spent. A very creative place - poeple add their own art,,..
The Little Bighorn battlefield was next on the agenda. The Americans have a real knack of doing this type of thing very well. We only caught the tail end of the talk but the Ranger - a self-confessed cultural historian - spoke eloquently. The loss of life there was not huge, less than 400 souls with probably no more than 100 of those being Native Americans, but it was significant and also it was Custer's last stand and the beginning of the end for the Indian way of life,,,.
Devil's Tower in Wyoming is pretty impressive too, being the magma chamber of an ancient volcano which was originally 1.5 miles under the ground! Over time the river has washed (and is still washing) away the sedimentary rock surrounding it. It's similar in its make up to the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.
We then left Hulett, Wyoming, for Kimball, South Dakota, stopping on the way at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. It took 17 years to carve out of the mountainside and was 90% completed with dynamite!
Driving on we arrived at the Minutemen Missile Museum, one of the newest sites on the National Parks list, but although the museum was open sadly it was a disappointment for Peter as the silo itself was located about 15 miles away and the control centre had no visits left for that day. As we were due in Kimball (almost another 200 miles down the road), we decided we couldn't go back.
South Dakota is very flat and agricultural (as is South Minnesota) - corn (maize) as far as the eye can see! SD is the home of Laura Ingals Wilder (Little House on the Prairie).We think nothing now of driving 400 miles (although Kath manipulated the Minneapolis traffic without any horrendous mistakes) and continued on to Chippewa Falls in Wisconsin, which is the home of the late Seymour Cray - the father of the supercomputer. Of interest to Peter as a bit of a computer historian and collector.
We stayed in Billings for one more day as after driving 727 miles on Thursday and another 450 to Yellowstone and back - we felt we deserved a rest! Made the most of the day by visiting the Yellowstone Art Museum in downtown Billings which was a small amount of money well spent. A very creative place - poeple add their own art,,..
The Little Bighorn battlefield was next on the agenda. The Americans have a real knack of doing this type of thing very well. We only caught the tail end of the talk but the Ranger - a self-confessed cultural historian - spoke eloquently. The loss of life there was not huge, less than 400 souls with probably no more than 100 of those being Native Americans, but it was significant and also it was Custer's last stand and the beginning of the end for the Indian way of life,,,.
Devil's Tower in Wyoming is pretty impressive too, being the magma chamber of an ancient volcano which was originally 1.5 miles under the ground! Over time the river has washed (and is still washing) away the sedimentary rock surrounding it. It's similar in its make up to the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.
We then left Hulett, Wyoming, for Kimball, South Dakota, stopping on the way at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. It took 17 years to carve out of the mountainside and was 90% completed with dynamite!
Driving on we arrived at the Minutemen Missile Museum, one of the newest sites on the National Parks list, but although the museum was open sadly it was a disappointment for Peter as the silo itself was located about 15 miles away and the control centre had no visits left for that day. As we were due in Kimball (almost another 200 miles down the road), we decided we couldn't go back.
South Dakota is very flat and agricultural (as is South Minnesota) - corn (maize) as far as the eye can see! SD is the home of Laura Ingals Wilder (Little House on the Prairie).We think nothing now of driving 400 miles (although Kath manipulated the Minneapolis traffic without any horrendous mistakes) and continued on to Chippewa Falls in Wisconsin, which is the home of the late Seymour Cray - the father of the supercomputer. Of interest to Peter as a bit of a computer historian and collector.
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