Custer, Montana pop. 158 - Sept 2023

This week (9/2-9/9/23) I've been at an RV Park just off I-94, 2-miles from Custer, Montana. RV Park is a generous description considering it's really just a dirt field with full hook-ups. That being said, this has been a very tranquil stop along my way back to the Pacific Northwest.

Amazingly, this nondescript building with no signage on the RV Park property is an outstanding restaurant run by a husband-and-wife team.

Their menu changes each week ensuring the meals are always made with the freshest ingredients. They travel to Billings once a week for provisions which is a little over an hour away.

Mahi and Shrimp with roasted vegetables and rice - delicious!

Another gem is a diner, The Custer Coffee Pot, located in the nearby town of Custer.

I stopped in here on Sunday morning before heading to the Little Bighorn National Monument.

This little diner is a true slice of Americana!

So, after a huge breakfast I drove to the Little Bighorn National Monument. This monument preserves the site of the June 25 and 26, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn, aka Custer's Last Stand. It also serves as a memorial to those who fought in the battle: George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry and a combined Lakota - Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho force. It is also the site of a National Cemetary similar to Arlington.

Little Bighorn is the only battlefield in the world that indicates where combatants lost their lives in the battle.

As I was driving through the park, I encountered some very curious horses.

And of course, I made the obligatory stop at the nearby Trading Post.

The following day I ventured over to the smallest National Monument in the US, Pompey's Pillar.

Pompeys Pillar National Monument encompasses 51 acres on the banks of the Yellowstone River with a massive sandstone outcrop covering about 2 acres at its base and rising 120 feet high toward Montana’s Big Sky. The monument’s premier location at a natural ford in the Yellowstone River, and its geologic distinction as the only major sandstone formation in the area, have made Pompeys Pillar a celebrated landmark and outstanding observation point for more than eleven thousand years of human occupation. Hundreds of markings, petroglyphs, and inscriptions left by visitors have transformed this geologic phenomenon into a living journal of the American West. (Pompeys Pillar National Monument | Bureau of Land Management (blm.gov).

Clark wrote in his journal, “This rock which I shall Call Pompy's Tower is 200 feet high and 400 paces in secumphrance… The nativs have ingraved on the face of this rock the figures of animals &c. near which I marked my name and the day of the month & year.”