Son of the Morning Star to Spielberg

Hardin is a tiny, unremarkable town.  We chose to overnight here because only 15 miles away is the Crow's Nest, a tiny, unremarkable hill where George Armstrong Custer, Son of the Morning Star to the Indians, drew his last breath.  What I hadn't anticipated was that I-90 runs right through the site which made it both sad and a bit surreal.

Custer and his men were buried where they fell.  The markers in this fenced area just below the summit of the Crow's Nest show the location of each grave.  Custer was buried where you see the black stone near the center of the picture.  The following year, 1877, the officers were moved to cemeteries elsewhere.  Custer was reburied at West Point.  The remaining soldiers and civilians are now buried around the marble monument that sits on the crest of the hill just a few feet behind where I am standing.

Just a short distance away is a memorial to the Indians who fought and died here.

Tonight we are camped at the KOA Campground where Steven Spielburg and his crew stayed when they were filming the climactic scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It sits at the entrance to the Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming and we can see Devils Tower from the RV.  We got a front row seat because the campground closes for the season tomorrow and it is nearly empty.  I have a number of photos, but I shot them all in RAW format with my Big Canon because the battery in my point-and-shoot Canon died at the Little Big Horn and I haven't gotten around to converting them to JPEGs yet.

Day 12
Hardin, Montana to Devils Tower, Wyoming

Daily Mileage:  258.2
Total Mileage:  3,155.1