Tag Archives: bozeman trail

Friday 16th April 2021 – I WAS LATE …

people on beach place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… going out for my afternoon walk this afternoon.

That’s the reason why there was so much beach about this afternoon. Had I gone out at my usual time of 16:00 instead of the 17:15 that it was today, there would have been much less beach than this. And probably many more people on it too because I do have to say that, once more, the number of people out and about this afternoon was quite small.

Anyway, despite being late for my afternoon walk, I was very much on time for leaving my bed this morning – right after the first alarm yet again despite having had a night that was rather later than I intended – in fact rather later than anyone intended.

After the medication, first thing that I did was to pack up the carrots that I’d peeled, diced and blanched yesterday evening and forgotten to mention. They are now in the freezer busily freezing away now.

Next task was to launch an attack on the photos from August 2019 and had a good session on there.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought or as it sounds either because my notes were … errr .. indistinct. At one point I had to use one of these mapping programs to drive my route for about 60 or 70 miles so I could identify a couple of the locations.

But by the time that I’d knocked off I’d made good progress, left my coal mine, visited the site of the Battle of the Rosebud – a battle that effectively sealed the fate of Custer and his Army – and was in the Cheyenne Reservation well on my way to rejoin the Bozeman Trail at the site of Fort CF Smith.

There were a few things that I needed to do and then went off for lunch and my home-made bread. It was just as delicious as it was from Day One.

This afternoon I sat down to continue with the photos from last Summer’s excursion around Central Europe. Unfortunately though, I crashed out. I hadn’t done all that many either.

What awoke me was Rosemary giving me a ring on the phone. She wanted a good chat and so good was it that it went on until 17:10 – one of the longest chats yet. She’s had her first anti-virus and her new fitted kitchen is no complete but she couldn’t make her new dishwasher work.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallEventually I managed to take myself out so I went to have a look over the wall at the end of the car park and down onto the beach to see what was going on out there.

As I said earlier, there weren’t too many people around down there walking about this afternoon. I did however find a small family group settling down to a late afternoon picnic and being joined by other people coming down the steps from the Rue du Nord. And they have plenty of time to make the most of it.

The weather wasn’t very pleasant though this afternoon. There was plenty of sunlight and it was actually quite warm if you could find some shade from the wind. But the rate it which it was swirling around here meant that finding wind-shade wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Off along the headland I wandered, in the company of just one or two other people. maybe it’s because I’m so late that there were so few people about this afternoon.

trawler baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past few days we’ve been seeing fishing boats working away in the Baie de Mont St Michel. There was another one out there today.

Walking past the Monument to the Resistance, down the path and across the empty car park, I went down to the end of the headland to have a look at her. She was out there working on her own without another boat in the vicinity as far as I can see.

There were a couple of military-types over by the lighthouse and the Coastguard Station too but just recently a notice “no photography” has appeared by the gate of the aforementioned so I desisted. Instead I wandered off along the path on the top of the headland.

fishing boats tied up at fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnother thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall has been the number of fishing boats tied up at the wharves in the outer tidal harbour and left there to go aground when the tide goes out.

There are a couple more of them today tied up over there at the wharf by the Fish Processing Plant. These twin-hulled catamaran-types don’t have too much of an issue with that because they will always remain upright when the tide goes out without careening over to one side.

There is no activity going on at the wharf – no vans or anything else waiting there to be loaded up with seafood or to unload supplies or provisions, so all that I can assume is that the boats have quite simply been left there until required again, and that’s a strange way round of working.

fishing boat anakena aztec lady chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was there at my viewpoint overlooking the harbour, I turned my attention to the chantier navale.

And we have yet another change in occupier down there this afternoon. The pleasure craft Nyx III has now disappeared, back into the water and her place has now been taken by another fishing boat.

Unfortunately I’m not able to read her name completely due to a ladder having been placed in the way, obscuring it. It’s something like Perle d’Amour although that’s not correct. We’ll have to wait until some other time for me to be able to see it properly. I’m not going to walk down there right now for a closer look at it. I’m going to head home for my afternoon coffee.

aeroplane f-gorn pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut not before I’m overflown by another light aircraft on its way to the airport at Donville les Bains.

This one is F-GORN, a Robin DR 400-120 that’s owned by the Aero Club de Granville and is the machine that they use for solo flying hours if one of the other planes is being used for something else. That’s probably what it’s going right now, because she hasn’t registered a flight plan.

Back home I made myself a coffee and came back in here to carry on with what I was trying to do earlier – to wit, to deal with the photos from my Central Europe trip. And now, they are all done and dusted and are on line now. So that’s that project is now all finished at long, long last.

There was the hour on the guitars which was very agreeable for a change just recently and just before I went for tea Rosemary rang me again to say that she now had her dishwasher working.

Tea was the rest of the curry that I had made yesterday with rice and veg followed by one of the desserts that I’d made yesterday. The curry tasted even better today than it did yesterday, as marinated curries always do, and the dessert was nice too.

My notes are finished early tonight so I might even have an early night for a change. And I can’t say that I don’t need it.

With going to Leuven on Wednesday I’m not going shopping tomorrow. Instead I’m going to have another day in here working, leading up to a nice lie-in on Sunday morning. And when it comes round, I’ll consider that I’ve earned it.

Thursday 8th April 2021 – TODAY, I’VE HAD …

trawler yacht english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… another one of those nautical days that we have every so often.

There has been so much traffic on the waters today that I’ve really been spoilt for choice when it came to taking photos because I could have taken 100 and still not done justice to everything that was going on out there at sea this afternoon.

When I went out there this afternoon for my little walk around the headland I was overwhelmed by the amount of nautical traffic that was bobbing up and down on the high seas, from the smallest plank-boarders to some of the larger trawlers and freighters that hang around the port.

marite unloading normandy trader port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd it wasn’t just out at sea that we were having all of this excitement.

It was pretty busy in the harbour this morning too. One of or favourite boats, the little Jersey Freighter Normandy Trader has come into port on the overnight tide. She’s now tied up underneath the crane at the loading bay while the personnel of the Chamber of Commerce make ready to unload her.

You can see all of the material on the quayside already. I reckon that this is the load that she has to take back with her to St Helier. And you can see how busy she is with all of that load. No wonder her owners are talking about buying a larger boat

vna pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd it’s not just at sea and in the port that we are extremely busy. Thee was quite a lot going on in the air today too.

The bright sunny weather has certainly brought out the aeroplanes this afternoon, like this one that overflew me as I walked my weary way around the headland. I’ve no idea what it is because I couldn’t see the registration properly. I can see the last three letters – VNA – of its registration.

Although I checked, there was nothing of that registration that had taken off from or landed at Granville Airport this afternoon. It’s probably frustrating me deliberately by not filing a flight plan so people like me can’t identify it.

fishing boats port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallSo while you admire the picture of the busy port this afternoon with the crowds of boats queueing up and the portable boat lift now tackling Lys Noir, I’ll tell you about my busy morning.

It was rather a late night, although not as late as it has been once or twice, so I was able to leap out of bed with alacrity when the alarm went off.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone notes for the last couple of days seeing as I missed out on doing it yesterday. And if you now look at yesterday’s entry, you’ll see that that is now up-to-date with the entries for yesterday now incorporated. Now that those were out of the way I could turn my attention to last night’s travel.

normandy trader port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallSome people came round to my house, including an old friend of mine so I invited a girl to come along as well. I made all of the arrangements but just at the last moment when I was getting ready to receive my visitors I had a ‘phone call to say that this girl was having to go into work so she wouldn’t be able to come. I had a little morning’s entertainment with these people and just strode out and the followed me. They went their separate ways. I just happened to be walking past their house when a car pulled up and these 3 girls got out. 1 of them said “so-and-so will run you home” referring to her youngest sister. “She knows the trick about the car”. They parked up but then they saw me walking past and asked “Eric, are you coming in?”. I walked up the path towards the door to join them.

having dome that I turned my attention to the photos from August 2019 on my North American Adventure and managed a few of those before it was time for me to go off for my shower.

And having done that, I wandered off out on my way to the shops for my mid-week shopping trip.

pointing rampe de monte à regret Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallMy route took me past the top of the Rampe du Monte à Regret where they are using the poor state of the medieval wall as a training ground for young apprentices.

And sure enough, there were about half a dozen there, a few of whom were females, something that is always nice to see. All of them with their trowels and mortar boards doing a nice rightward lead along all of the cracks. It brought back many happy memories of when I was POINTING THE WALLS AT MY HOUSE all those years ago.

having watched them for a while I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … down the steps and on into the town.

roundabout place charles de gaulle Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd it looks as if they are getting ready for the summer season, such as it might be this year, in the town.

The other day when we were around the town we saw the candyfloss and sweet stand that had arrived in the town and was now parked up hear the harbour. Today I noticed that the kiddies’ roundabout has arrived and has now been set up in the Place Charles de Gaulle ready to entertain them for the next few months.

My next port of call was LIDL for the midweek session of my weekly shopping. I didn’t want all that much from there so I ended up with quite a light load. So not to waste the trip I stocked up with some soya milk and some tomato sauce because I can always use that sort of thing and I never seem to have enough.

roadworks road closed rue paul poirier Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallOn the way back home I had to go along the Rue Paul Poirier, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

There were roadworks in the street today and it was closed to all traffic. Not for pedestrians though so I could make my way along there and while I was it it, I could see what they were trying to do.

They had half of the road dug up near the junction with the Rue Etoupefour but as for why, I didn’t have any idea. They were digging a small trench and one of the guys was relaying the cobbles where there is the 5-minute waiting spot, cutting a few of them with his stone cutter to make them fit into their spaces. I suppose we’ll have to wait for a few days after they have cleared off in order to see what they have been doing.

roadworks rue etoupefour Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAt the other end of the street, having pushed my way through the roadworks, I crossed over the road and started to go up the Rue des Juifs where I glanced down at the junction of the Place des Corsaires and the Rue Etoupefour.

There was a man down there with some of the cobbles pulled up, chipping away at them. I’m sure that it can’t be a coincidence with people working like this at both ends of the street . They must be doing some kind of work in common so I suppose we’ll find our about that in due course too.

Anyway I carried on up the Rue des Juifs with my light load hardly impeding me at all. I wasn’t going to say that I ran up the street but it was a good climb up there with hardly a pause for breath.

unloading normandy trader port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was an occasion to call for a pause halfway up the hill because there was something of interest going on at the docks.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that each of the Jersey freighters, Thora and Normandy Trader has started to carry a couple of small sealed containers, presumably with private freight, and this morning they were unloading one of them from the deck of Normandy Trader and putting it on the quayside ready to be taken away.

That was all of the excitement for the morning. I wandered off home for my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread and to continue with my photo editing.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to do too many because I crashed out on my chair. And crashed out completely too. I must have been out for about an hour and a half altogether. As a result I had a very late lunch.

After lunch, seeing as it was a nice sunny day with very little wind I went and attacked Caliburn’s door.

Trying to take off the door card was a contortionist’s delight and it took me an absolute age to free it off just so far that I could put my hand inside the door skin. And as for where the spring clip that holds on the window winder went, I have absolutely no idea.

Being able to put my hand inside the door skin was one thing. To actually open the door was something else and my hands ended up black and blue with cuts and bruises but with a great amount of force and inconvenience I finally managed spring the catch and open the door.

With the door open I could re-attach the bits that had fallen off and do the necessary adjustments and now the door will open from the outside as well as the inside. But I’m not putting the door card back on until I’m sure that it works.

seagull place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was out there working, I was not alone.

Yesterday we saw the seagull on the windowsill of one of the apartments on the other side of the building. And this time the bird is waiting at the correct window – the one where there is the plastic bird model on the inside. And you only have to look at the state of the window to see how often it is that the bird calls there.

But anyway, I went off inside to put away my tools and then came back outside to go for my afternoon walk in the sunshine.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe first thing to do was to go to the wall at the end of the car park to look over the wall to see what was going on down on the beach today.

The tide is quite well in this afternoon so thee wasn’t all that much beach to be on today but even so, there was still enough room for a few people to wander about. These two people were having a pile of fun leaping about from rock to rock down there and they will probably keep on doing it until the tide comes in and cuts off their only means of retreat.

There was no retreat for me today. I was continuing my walk along the path on top of the cliffs. And despite the really nice weather there was hardly anyone else about so I had the place pretty much to myself

autogyro pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallA little earlier I mentioned that there was quite a lot going on in the air and I mentioned the light aeroplane that flew by overhead.

We also had another regular visitor going past me overhead this afternoon someone whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. It’s the old yellow autogyro that we’ve seen in the past on several occasions. We saw a different one, a reddy-orange one, fly past us the other day and it made me wonder when we would be seeing this one again.

She was flying quite high over my head too, much higher than normal and he had a passenger too so they presumably are on one of these sightseeing trips that she does every now and again

The French have a saying jamais deux sans trois – “never two without a third”, and that applied to the aircraft that I saw today.

EC-MVE Airbus A320-232 pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallIn fact they may well have said “thirty-third” because there were so many in the sky this afternoon. Today’s choice of aircraft is an Airbus A320-232 that’s operated by Vueling Airlines, a Spanish low-cost airline and is operating their flight VY7826 /VLG7826 which is the 15:00 from Barcelona heading to Gatwick Airport.

Her registration number is EC-MVE and airframe number 8130 which means that she was built about three or so years ago and supplied new to the airline which means that she was supplied new to the airline in February 2018.

She wet past me over head at about 25,000 feet and 388 knots and had already started her descent down to the Gatwick flight path as I was watching her

chausiais yacht baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have spent a great deal of time discussing Chausiais, the little freighter or barge that runs the freight between the Ile de Chausey and the mainland.

She’s usually been tied up at the ferry port or in the inner harbour but today I’ve actually been lucky enough to catch her on her travels, coming back from the ile de Chausey.

She’s down there now manoeuvring her way between a couple of yachts as she returns to the port after her little run out. I suppose that with all of the tourists and second-home owners being here fleeing the lockdown in Paris, she has plenty of work to do, ferrying the supplies out there to the island.

fishing boats waiting for port de Granville harbour to open Manche Normandy France Eric HallFrom the end of the headland I followed the rail of yachts Chausiais and all of the fishing boats towards the harbour.

The harbour gates into the inner harbour aren’t open as yet but the time can’t be that far off because the queue of trawlers around them waiting to go in was quite oppressive. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so many loitering around the harbour gates. Chausiais had quite a struggle to fight her way into her berth.

Earlier on we saw the portable boat lift wrapping her slings around lys noir but I didn’t hang around long enough to see what they were going to be doing with her. Instead, I carried on along the path.

spirit of conrad charles marie port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was walking around on the path above the harbour I’d noticed a sail being erected in the inner harbour. And earlier while I’d been fixing Caliburn’s door, I’d seen my neighbour Pierre who owns Spirit of Conrad in his working clothes leap into his car and drive off.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I assumed that it must be Spirit of Conrad that was having her sail hoisted, and it seems that I was quite right. It looks as if she’s being prepared for the sea again so I wonder where she might be going this time. We had fun on her when we were down the Brittany coast last summer.

Back at the apartment I had a coffee and then finished off the day’s photos from August 2019. I’m now on the Bozeman Trail at the site of the worst humiliation of the US Army at the hands of the native Americans prior to the battle of Little Big Horn where Colonel Fetterman and his entire troop of 79 soldiers and four civilian scouts were cut down by Red Cloud and his Sioux warriors.

Before guitar practice there was time for a little bit of the Central Europe trip and then I absorbed myself in music. And I didn’t really enjoy it al that much tonight. My heart wasn’t in it for some reason and I couldn’t really get going.

Tea was taco rolls and rice and veg, followed by some of my jam roly-poly and coconut dessert.

Tomorrow is going to be a Welsh revision day, I reckon, ready for the restart of my courses. I’m becoming far too rusty. I could do with an early night but I’m not going to get it today, that’s for sure. It’s late so I’m going straight to be. And I’m hoping to have pleasant dreams despite my new evening medicine which somehow has the effect of tranquilising me.

Wednesday 7th August 2019 – ANOTHER HECTIC …

… day today.

It started off with yet another Sleep of the Dead and I remember nothing whatever about my night. I must have dictated something at some point because the dictaphone was still on but I remember nothing whatever about it and I’ll be interested to see what I might have said.

The bed was the most comfortable that I have slept in for quite a while (mine at home excepted of course) and the facilities in the room were second to none. The microwave was magnificent.

Only downside was the shower. The hot water was one of those ‘instant heat” arrangements that are either on or off and there’s no midway. With it taking a while to warm up and pass through the heater matrix it was impossible to set it at the right temperature. It was either hot or cold and that was that.

In the end I just washed my hair and rinsed myself off quickly.

On the road and after a photo opportunity for His Nibs I followed the route of the Johnson County War, when the stock growers tried to force the sodbusters off their lands.

One thing that I was planning to do on arrival at kaycee (the site of the famous KC ranch) was to go and visit the “Hole In The Wall”, the legendary hold-out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but I looked at the route on an aerial photograph and decided against it. Had I been in Strider I would have gone for it, but not a small hire car with street tyres.

Instead I went to find Fort Reno and luckily I tracked that down without too many problems at all. There was a sign to say where it was but that was about all.

However in the immediate vicinity there was a big flat beaten surface (like a parade ground might be) surrounded by heaps that had all the air of crumbled adobe from decayed western buildings, so that is my guess.

My route from Fort Reno brought me through some beautiful countryside and also through the oilfields of east-central Wyoming, famous for its role in the “Teapot Dome” scandal where a US Government Minister sold the navy’s oil reserve to a friend in exchange for a very large and thick brown envelope.

This road took me through Casper and out past the Sinclair Oil Refinery (a descendant of the oil company involved in the Teapot Dome scandal) and past several historical trail markers to Douglas where I ended up at Fort Fetterman.

When the Army was obliged to pull back from native American lands and abandon its forts there, it built a Bozeman Trail fort on the US side of the North Platte River. This was named Fort Fetterman after the recently deceased soldier about whom we talked the other day.

With it being on US soil, it was never disputed and so was not a stockaded fort like those further north.

A couple of buildings still exist today, having been used as a ranch house and barn after the fort was abandoned, but the rest is just disintegrated adobe around the parade ground.

And it’s just as well that a couple of buildings are still standing because another visitor, the Park ranger and I were caught in the most tremendous thunderstorm and had to seek shelter.

While I was waiting I asked the Ranger about motels. He told me of the Holiday Inn. When I mentioned that I was a budget traveller he tried to tell me about the Best Western. I don’t think t hat, like many Americans, they understand the meaning of the word “budget”. They just go out and get a bigger loan or overdraft.

Now I’m in Douglas in a crummy motel, the Four Winds. It’s the only room in town in my budget and it’s only thanks to the guy at the fort that I had it, so I can’t complain.

he also gave me a booklet on the Oregon and California Trail which I shall be picking up tomorrow sometime.

But I’ve run out of Vitamin B12 drink so I nipped to the Dollar Store, where I overheard this delightful conversation –
Customer – “how much are those cigarettes?”
Assistant – “4 dollars and six cents”
Customer – “how much are two packets?”
Assistant – “errr … let me see … errr 8 dollars and 16 cents!”
And they call this lot the “master race”.

But I’m not exempt. I bought a cheap tin of mushrooms to liven up my soup tonight, only to find that I need a tin opener which I don’t have.

So I’ll hope for another good sleep tonight. I’m winding down now ready to return to Winnipeg by next week end.

Tuesday 6th August 2019 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today.

Started off with a reasonable night’s sleep with just a little tossing and turning here and there, but it was a struggle to leave the bed, I can tell you.

So medicine, another shower and clean-up, followed by breakfast, and then uploading all of the … gulp … 180 photos from yesterday onto the laptop.

And then uploading the dictaphone note and the dashcam stuff too. I was exhausted after that.

There should have been an early start but I ended up chatting to mine host and wife for quite some time in exchange for a coffee.

Up the road, first to Decker where I photographed a lot of the mining installations there. Much of it is open-cast but there is evidence of what is suggestive of a deep mine.

Onwards then to the site of the Battle of the Rosebud where I spent a couple of hours wandering about the part of the battlefield that is on public land (and there’s not so much of that).

But the battle itself is very interesting, if not crucial. General Crook, whose adventures we have followed in the past thanks to John Bourke’s brilliant On The Border With Crook has been discussed in these pages many times, was on his way to join up with Custer and Co when his over-stretched and over-tired column, resting on the Rosebud, was hit by a large party of native Americans.

Although Crooks troops pushed them off, they were so battered that they had to retreat to their camp at Goose Creek (near present-day Sheridan) to regroup and resupply.

And so they never joined up with Custer.

So imagine how different the battle of the Little Big Horn would have been had Custer had an extra 1100 troops at his disposal (although whether he would have welcomed them was another matter – he had turned down two regiments of infantry and a Gatling gun brigade on the grounds that they would slow him down).

From there I passed by Little Big Horn again (still wondering why the cavalry dismounted. On foot they were useless. At least mounted, they could have gone for an “arrowhead” charge to try to break out, rather than be butchered on the ground) and through to the Crow Agency where I stopped for fuel.

And that wasn’t a good idea. I ended up being stuck for about 20 minutes in a roadworks queue and then another 20 minutes at a level crossing as a mile-long coal train inched its way by.

A good run into the Big Horn mountains brought ;e to the head of the Bozeman Trail. Here after much binding in the marsh I found where the “Hayfield Fight” had been, but finding Fort CF Smith was rather different. I knew the GPS location which I knew was a private field, so from the field’s edge on both sides I tried to find anything at all.

There were some vague outlines in the field but really they could be anything. Trying to find the remains of adobe buildings that had been abandoned and burnt in 1868 was expecting too much.

There was no sign or anything acknowledging its existence so I had to go by where I would have put the fort had I been in charge.

On the way back I found a car upside-down in a ditch, and then a very long drive all the way back to the outskirts of Sheridan.

At Ranchester I found the site of the “Battle of Tongue River” where General Connor’s troops attacked a sleeping Arapaho village and killed mainly non-combatant women, children and the elderly.

Incidentally, have you always noticed that it’s a “battle” whenever the white men attacked native civilians, yet it’s a “massacre” whenever the natives returned the compliment?

I carried on then down the Bozeman Trail looking for the sites relating to Fort Phil Kearny. I found the wagon-hill fight site and the “6th December” fight, but not the site of the death of French Pete which rather annoyed me.

Buffalo is on the limit of the Sturgis Festival travel zone so finding a motel was difficult. A friendly motel owner rang a few friends and now I’m in a cabin on the edge of town.

I was rather dubious at first, as the smell of wet dog in the reception put me off and the scrap car and general air of neglect didn’t help, but it’s very deceptive as the cabins are beautiful inside.

I’ve had my soup, and I’m not going out. I shall enjoy my little cabin while I can.

Sunday 4th August 2019 – TOTALLY USELESS …

… waste of time miserable pathetic excuse of a coach driver.

First rule when turning round is “drive past, back up, turn round”. But not this guy!

Swings into a country lane forwards (how he hopes that he can see what’s passing behind the bus 40-odd feet back totally beats me) and promptly grounds out the rear end of the bus on the high camber.

90 perishing minutes we were sitting there waiting for a breakdown crew to come and tow him back out and put the exhaust and rear bumper back on.

As a result we lost the light, found a rainstorm, did only half of the visits that we were supposed to visit (and those in record time too) and only got off the bus once – and at the place that I had visited the other day too.

One very unhappy bunny here.

And it all started so well too. Another Sleep Of The Dead and awake sprightly (well, almost) just before the third alarm. Breakfast, tidy up, a quick shower and hit the road to arrive at the Kearney Village Hall in time for the talk to begin.

Three eminent local historians each gave us a talk of life on the Bozeman Trail and some of the characters who used to frequent it. Very interesting too and I learnt a great deal, which is the whole point of these things.

After lunch we set off on the bus to visit th sites of many of the skirmishes that took place between travellers on the Bozeman Trail and the Native Americans through whose land they passed, but as I mentioned before, that fell rather flat with no time to go and visit anything.

I was so disappointed.

But then I hit the road and I’m now in the Rodeway Inn in Sheridan. Just up the road from here is the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn and that’s tomorrow’s destination.

Saturday 3rd August 2019 – HERE I AM …

… again, back in the Story Pines Motel or whatever it’s called.

The reason is that there’s a charabanc outing from the town tomorrow and there was a spare seat on it. And as it’s going to places that I would have wanted to visit had I known about them and there’s a guide going too, then include me in!

After all of the messing about last night, it was rather a late night and as a result, something of a struggle for me to rouse myself. I wasn’t in much of a shape to do much for a while so I sat and vegetated.

My breakfast porridge was nice though.

By the time that I had gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days what with one thing and another) and had a coffee kindly provided for me by the landlady, I hit the streets.

First on the cards today was a delightful drive down the road a couple of miles to a field at the foot of an escarpment in the Rocky Mountains.

This field is forever immortalised as the site of what became famous as “the Wagon Box Fight”. A group of US soldiers was protecting a gang of woodcutters, who had taken all of the boxes off their conestoga wagons so that they could carry more timber down to the sawmill.

Luckily the officer in charge had had the foresight to arrange the boxes into a kind of defensive corral, because suddenly they were set upon by a band of Native Americans.

The tactics that the natives applied was to incite the soldiers to fire, and then charge before they had time to reload their single-shot muzzle-loaders.

But what they hadn’t realised was that just before the event, the weapons of the soldiers had been replaced with breech-loading repeating rifles. So when they charged, they were met with several other volleys.

A sentry post on a hill a few miles away saw the fight and sent a signal to a relief column which was armed with a mountain howitzer, and they put the native Americans to flight.

Interestingly, the report at the time puts the number of natives killed by the 26 defenders of the wagon boxes as “over 1500”. A later investigation put the number as “no more than 60”.

There was a report that after this incident a more substantial stockade was built a few hundred yards away. And looking carefully, I could make out a trace of what would correspond with an earthen mound in the area where this was said to be.

Next stop was several miles down a dirt track to Fort Phil Kearny, and while I was there we had 5 minutes of rain. The fort was built in 1866 to protect emigrants on the Bozeman Trail north, in defiance of a treaty with the Native Americans. Those latter were not at all happy and in the two years that the fort was operational there were countless conflicts, the most famous of which I’ll talk about later.

The fort was eventually abandoned after just two years and the jubilant natives burnt it to the ground. It was first excavated in the 1960s but a full-scale programme was launched in the 1990s and the entire site has been mapped. Pickets placed in the ground show the outlines of the walls and the buildings and an entrance has been reconstructed.

On that note I headed off to the nearest big town, Buffalo, for fuel and groceries. I found both (or at least, I thought that I had) at the same place but while I was fuelling up, they closed the shop.

So much for that. I ended up at a local Dollar Store and from there the local IGA supermarket.

And more bad news – my Canadian bank card has now ceased to function. I shall have to get onto that.

A beautiful drive through the countryside (as much as I could because Interstate 90 has simply wiped out much of the traditional route) saw me back near Story and heading into the hills on the other side. I found the only shade in Wyoming where I could eat my lunch, and then headed further up to where the old Highway 87 (which replaced the Bozeman Trail) was washed out.

Here on the peak of a hill is a monument to a Lieutenant Fetterman, 78 soldiers and 2 civilian volunteers.

in December of 1866 native Americans had been intimidating a wood supply train and Colonel Carrington, in charge of Fort Phil Kearny, ordered Fetterman to take a detachment to push the natives away, but under no circumstances go beyond a certain ridge, which was the last line of sight from the fort.

The soldiers did as they bid, but here the issue becomes confused. As the soldiers stopped, a group of natives taunted them for their timidity. One of the officers – some say Fetterman but other say Lieutenant Grummond in charge of the cavalry detachment – rose to the bait and pursued the band. So as one shot off, the others followed.

The natives ran away, leading the soldiers into an ambush which was carefully sprung. Evidence from a party that visited the site the next day found evidence of panic and indiscipline as the soldiers fled in chaos, but no-one answered for this because not one of Fetterman’s party remained alive.

it was that heaviest defeat suffered by the US Army at the hands of the natives until Little Big Horn 10 years later

All but one of the bodies had been horribly mutilated. That one, of bugler Metzler, had been covered with a buffalo robe as a mark of respect. His bugle was battered and shapeless, leading to the conclusion that after running out of ammunition, he fought the natives in hand-to-hand combat using his bugle as a weapon, and his bravery earned him the right to respect.

Drenched in sweat and with a thirst that you could photograph after my long walk in the heat of the sun, I headed back through the herd of cows to the car and drove back to my motel.

First thing that I did was to sit on the porch and drink a can of flavoured water. Second thing that I did was to crash out for half an hour.

I managed tea tonight – some vegetable soup with bread. The appetite isn’t quite back but I’m still coping all the same.

And now an early night as I’m off of my outing tomorrow.