Stuff on Us: Onward to Yellowstone

I left the campground by 8:30 the next morning and headed to Yellowstone. At this point I still wasn't sure if I was headed for the Northeast Entrance or all the way to Gardiner and the North Entrance. They each have their positives and negatives. I was most likely going to Gardiner and enter there as that was where I was most familiar with- I knew where to get food and gas, I knew roughly how far it was from there to my next resting place, I knew there were roads closed in the park but not exactly which roads they were but I knew that from Gardiner I could get where I need to be...so I continued to head west. I had a work call for my new job (listen mode only, I did not actually need to participate) at 1 pm so I had to be somewhere relatively stable with good reception by then. So I'm driving along and see a sign for the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and think, huh, why not?

Yes, I backtracked a little bit. And I was on some road between I90 and I94 all by myself...there was literally no one else on the road. That was a recurring theme of the trip actually. Many, many wide open hi-ways with no one else in sight. Even the whole stretches with no tracker trailers or anything. It was a little odd.

the above one was taken heading home, the below one heading out west...middle of the day, middle of the summer...no cars, no trucks, certainly no "traffic" on either side of the road as far as I could see. adn this is a major interstate, not some back road (though the back roads were also empty)...traveling during a pandemic has its benefits

To my recollection (and my memory is kinda foggy sometimes) I have never been to an actual battlefield site before. I have been to Valley Forge in PA, though that's an encampment rather than a battlefield, and I have been all over the DC metro and near the Manassas, Fredricksburg and other battlefields in that area, I have toured Philadelphia and its environs but I just don't recall ever being to a battlefield site. I don't know what I was expecting. There was a walking tour, there was a cemetery, there were monuments to fighters on both sides and there were tombstones with the names of wives' of fallen soldiers. It was interesting. I'm glad I stopped. I do kind of think if you have seen one battlefield, perhaps, you have seen them all? Not sure.

One thing that I did not really take note of at the time but in hindsight is clear: this place was actually pretty crowded and it was the ONLY place on my trip that was. I mean, Old Faithful at Yellowstone was crowded but it always is...other places that would generally be packed in the middle of August when the weather is perfect and kids are out of school were practically empty. It made traveling in the middle of a pandemic nice for those of us who did it. I think this may have been packed mostly because my trip to Yellowstone happened to coincide with the annual 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which explains why there were so many bikes and bikers at the Battlefield. People were generally wearing masks around other people (though not everyone, and not everywhere) within the Little Big Horn park, and certainly it was easy enough to keep away from other people since its a wide open place with plenty of room even on the trails.