Today it's the Little Big Horn!

The weather until now has been good in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon. It was the reverse today, cloudy this morning with rain. As a prelude to today, last night we were listening to 'Round the Horne' on BBC7. The story was 'The Palamino Kid' a skit on westernsand it just seemed so very appropriate.

We set off for Little Big Horn but made a diversion to a Wal-Mart. There were one or two items that we had to get. I used my credit card and the poor chap couldn't get his terminal to accept our address and then the card reader wouldn't read my card, there's no magnetic strip as such and the card reader couldn't do chip and pin!

Whilst in the store the heavens opened and it poured down in a deluge. Even after we set out on the road it remained overcast. The scenery was very much the same as before. We arrived at the Battle of the Little Big Horn memorial site.

The area is high and undulating hills with sharp ridges dropping to a plateau with the river running along the bottom of the hills. There were forested areas below and it's easy to see how the battle took place. The museum gives a very fair and balanced viewpoint from both sides. I would imagine that 20 years ago it would have been quite different. The whole situation leading up to Custer's death was a disaster waiting to happen. It seems to have ill-planned and ill-led. There were talks given by the rangers and one of the talks made a very significant point. He pointed out that for all the 'advanced' technology that Custer and his men had, it failed – the guns took too long to load, even the pistols. The Natives were technologically backwards but their weapons – knives, bows and arrows, hatchets – all worked and they defeated the troops. Now, doesn't that sound just like a certain Asian war where the 'backward' peasants defeated the technologically advanced Americans. Enough of this philosophising and back to what we did. We must have spent a good two hours there as we also did the self-guided auto-tour. That was interesting as it built up a pattern of the troops being gradually winnowed down in a series of skirmishes and the 'Last Stand' was the climax. All in all it was very good.

The weather by this stage was quite stable and sunny. It was time to move on and we headed off to Buffalo. Again, the scenery was much as I've described earlier. The area we were travelling through is where the Rockies meets the plains. The road, an Interstate, was good and fast, up to 75 mph. When we arrived we noticed that there a 'Hoot and Howl' restaurant and bar attached to the motel. The name says it all but the food was good.

Tomorrow, Saturday, it's Sundance, Deadwood and a stay near Mount Rushmore.

Cody to Laurel

Another short journey day today. It gives us time to look around some of the towns we stop in otherwise it'd be just one drive after another.

Today we go up into 'The Big Sky' state, Montana. There's no sales tax! We moseyed along to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, '5 museums in one'. The five museums are: Buffalo Bill Museum, what else; Draper Museum of Natural History; Plains Indian Museum; Cody Firearms Museum; Whitney Gallery of Western Art

The two of the five that we didn't do were the Plains Indian Museum and the Western Art ones so I can't write about them. You walk into the lobby and the five museums split off from that; quite clever. We first went around the Buffalo Bill Museum. Fairly obvious what it was about and it did it very well. It showed his life story fairly and without embellishment. He did lead an exciting life when he was young but when he went into show business the events of his life and the show business side blurred and it was quite fair to explain that all the stories about him were not made up by him but by others who used him as a cypher for the 'Wild West'. The Wild West show he ran he was at pains to point out was nothing more than that, a show. It caught the public imagination so much that they believed it to be the truth rather than a fanciful show. It didn't seem to make claims about him that were unrealistic, unlike one or two exhibitions we've seen. On show were various artefacts from his life including clothes, saddles, newspaper articles,etc in fact, all the things you would imagine there should be as well as exhibits about some of the other people involved. Overall not too bad.

If ever there was an exhibition dedicated to slaughter the Firearms Museum is it. It was a relentless exhibition about firearms, which pretty much speaks for itself. However the first item on show was a machine gun of the type used in 'Carry On Up the Khyber' where Terry Scott and Charles Hawtry use one to try and shot the invading Burpas. All I could do was look at and ask my partner where the gramophone records go - if you don't get the reference watch the film and you'll get it. With 1,500 guns on show on the upper level and another 1,200 on a lower one it was a touch overwhelming. A one-theme exhibition that got tedious fairly quickly and we both headed out after about 10 minutes.

The Draper Museum of Natural History couldn't have been more different. It presented the natural history of the area in a series of levels representing the different heights. It was very interactive and quite beautifully done. Starting at the highest level one spirals down through different exhibition areas. The quality and standard of the information and exhibits is extremely high. There are glass panels in the floor that one can walk over showing what goes on under the ground too.

After a coffee and bun in one of the cafes we wandered down along Sheridan Avenue. It was quite typical of other towns we had visited but more touristy. It wasn't overwhelming or showy but quite pleasant.

We followed the satnav instructions for leaving the town and headed on up to Laurel until... we got to the state border. Going along we had noticed that the scenery was changing; the hills were becoming flatter and more distant; the signs for road works that had been showing for 30 miles or more has disappeared. So, it was a bit of a shock when we were flagged down for road works at the state line. We were told it was going to be about ten minutes and we had time to get out and stretch our legs, which we did. The woman chatted with us. She was a Montanan but lived about 350 miles north and worked doing the traffic control for about a 10-12 hour shift! She had been brought up on one of the reservations so we guess that she was a real native American! The pilot car arrived and we headed off, followed by a long line of traffic. The work was extremely extensive. The road was being ripped up and replaced by new sections. This went on for about three miles. The pilot car pulled off ready to take the next group across avoiding the trucks and on we went. The road became normal until we realised that the works covered a much larger stretch, in fact they went on for 10 miles on and off. The authorities were widening and renewing the road in huge sections. This wasn't even a highway but an ordinary road.

It wasn't long after that we saw signs for Laurel and we could smell it too! As we hit town we could see that there was a small oil refinery and a large railway junction and sidings. It's the most industry that we've seen so far, not that we have been in areas that are likely to be industrial. We found the motel and settled in. As we had arrived quite early for once we headed up to the town of Billings for a look around. We picked up some groceries for our evening meal, including a bottle of white wine. To cool it quickly we get ice from the ice dispenser put it into the sink with some water and roll the bottle around. It gets the temperature down quite quickly.

Tomorrow it's off to Little Big Horn!