Tag Archives: battle of the rosebud

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.

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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.

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Monday 5th August 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in Sheridan again tonight.

Not at the same motel as last time though. At probably the cheapest in the town and certainly the cheapest in which I’ve stayed.

“So what’s it like?” I hear you ask.
“The cheapest motel in which I’ve stayed so far” reply I

But seriously, it might be old and dated and worn but it’s clean and everything works. The shower is good too, and what more can any man desire?

The air conditioning is much quieter than last night’s motel (although that’s not saying a lot). Last night it was a case of “turn off the aircon and lie awake sweltering” or “turn on the aircon and lie awake because of the noise”.

But I did manage to drop off a few times.

Much to my surprise I dropped straight back into exactly the same place where I had left a nocturnal voyage the previous evening. And even more interestingly, after I went back to sleep after an awakening, I stepped right back into where I had left it a couple of minutes earlier.

And I did get the girl too. Not ‘arf I did!

It was a struggle to awaken as you might expect and I vegetated for quite a while. I made it into breakfast (a couple of rounds of toast with jam but included in the price) then came back for a shower.

By now it was time to phone the bank and I’ve no idea how much it’s going to cost me but my card is now unblocked and I can use it.

Heading into town I went to look at the “exhibition” locomotive where the railway station used to be. It’s a 4-8-4 “Northern” steam locomotive and, rather like “Big Boy”, who we met in Southern Wyoming in 2002 it’s in pretty miserable condition, slowly rotting away – a stain on the character of the town.

And it might not be there long because they have now “discovered” that it’s full of asbestos.

From there I went shopping in Walmart (my card does now work) where I found some vegan cheese and broke the weighing scales at the check-out.

From there I headed north, stopping every 10 minutes or so to photograph a locomotive. I’m in the deep open-cast coal mining area and they run merry-go-round trains to move the coal. Most of the locomotives are Burlington Northern and Santa Fe outfits although I was taken by surprise when a Kansas City Southern locomotive went rattling past, miles out of its territory.

Eventually I reached the Little Big Horn battlefield where the miserable bar stewards refused to give me the senior citizens’ discount. “That only applies to US citizens” – the first that I’ve ever heard of that in a National Park. I had to pay the full $25:00.

But I was there for hours. I had a good walk down to the deep ravine where the final deaths took place as the native Americans mopped up the surviving troopers, a good walk around Last Stand Hill, the cemetery and the Native American monument, and another good walk around Benteen’s final hold-out position where the survivors hung on (and there were survivors, despite what people think. It was only the troops with Custer, about half of the 7th Cavalry complement) who were lost.

The drive between the various points was interesting, and the trail of bodies along the route and down in the Deep Ravine only goes to confirm that apart from a couple of isolated actions, it was basically a panic-stricken rout. Why else would 41 troopers be running down the hill TOWARDS the native village if they weren’t running away from the fighting up on the ridge?

That took all afternoon so I set out to find a motel. None in Busby, which really is a miserable one-horse town so I headed for the mining town of Decker.

Nothing there either so calling at the site of the “battle” of the Rosebud (which I’ll be visiting tomorrow) to say “hello’, I came back here.

In my room I noticed a “do not place anything on the heater”. I don’t recall having been here before, have I?

But the room is cheap, old and worn out. But then again so am I so what’s the difference? It’ll do me until tomorrow and then I can think again.

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