Day 12 - Beautiful Big Sky Country

After breakfast Dick and I did some parking lot maintenance. Dick wanted to change his points since the woody was experiencing some skipping on the long upgrades we were doing. I wanted to repair the overflow tank as there was a leak at the radiator cap and the tank would not flow back to the radiator. (On a side note; I was able to cure the leak so the overflow tank is working again, but Dick still has an intermittent skipping problem.)


Leaving Sheridan on I 90 we were concerned about the overcast skies, but it wasn't long before the sun appeared making it a beautifully cool day. Our plan for today was to visit Custer National Park and the Little Bighorn Battlefield. We first stopped at the Custer Museum where Dick and I enjoyed the displays and actual artifacts from the battle and other items of the army and Indian culture. It was a five mile ride to the actual national park. Using our "old timers" passes we got in without paying and went to the visitor center where Dick and I checked out the vast collection of Custer artifacts. Our timing was good and we are able to take in a presentation on the time line of the battle. Our park ranger was a college professor who has authored books on the battle. You can tell when someone has a passion about something and he sure did, his program was (to quote Mr. O'Brien) Fantastic! All the time he was telling the details of the battle, from a viewpoint of both sides we were looking at the Memorial to the battle.









We left the park headed for Billings, where we had lunch and gassed up the Model A's. Montana is Big Sky Country and all we can say...It sure is. The mountains are just beautiful. Our sights were now set on Bozeman where we had, what else - ice cream and then decided on going on to Butte. This was going to present us with a challenge as we will have to cross the Continental Divide. The climb started about 9 miles out of Butte and just kept going and going. Fortunately it was a climb that we were able to do in 3rd gear. The other thing was that there was hardly any traffic on the highway. Oh yes, the weather helped a lot as it was pretty chilly today compared to the heat of yesterday, which, I'm sure, would have caused us problems.



We arrived in Butte and checked into the Best Western. We were surprised that we covered 360 miles today since we did get off to a late start and stopped at Custer National Park. Tomorrow we will head towards Idaho.