Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument – NNs On the Wind

July 27, 2019July 31, 2019 Kathleen Ennen

JULY 27, 2019 – Little Bighorn Battlefied, MT

Some say visiting the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana is nothing more than visiting a hill with other hills nearby. It’s actually a bit more than that!

The visitor center has many details and a video with details of the encounter between a contingent of companies led by Colonel George A Custer and Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. There was an extremely large encampment of Native Americans that had left the reservations for better farming and hunting lands. The army had received orders to “round up” the natives and return them to the reservations over the course of a few months in early 1876. The Native Americans had no idea this was to happen and a contingent of the army comprised of forces led by several commanders was dispatched to carry out the orders from Washington.

With mistaken intelligence and assumptions the Battle ensued with tragic results for the 7^th Cavalry’s several companies. A monument marks the site and there are markers where the soldiers and warriors were slain. There is also a monument to the Native American warriors that is somber and well done. Adjacent to the site is a National Cemetery with symmetrical lines and rows of white tombstones. The cemetery stopped taking American combatants after the Vietnam War.

We have traveled over the years and retired in 2017, when we started on a nine month long adventure departing in December 2017. In the past we’ve traveled to Sri Lanka, Africa (several times), Turkey, and made a number of trips to Europe, and St Lucia. Our 2015 trip to Turkey, took nearly 3 weeks to explore Istanbul, Cappadocia and the areas in proximity to Izmir.

This is a chronicle of our travels, past and present. We love to travel by trains, planes, ships, and cars – and love sailing whenever and wherever we can.

We retired from the US General Services Administration, the Federal Government’s landlord! Thom worked at planning and large scale program management of numerous projects and Kathleen, a registered professional civil engineer, was a project manager for many infrastructure and building renovation projects, including both design and construction aspects, in New England, Florida and the metro DC area. We lived in Washington DC for 12 years and upon retirement sold the house, putting a few things in a 5’x5’ storage unit and started traveling.

On return to the US in September 2018, after traveling to 21 countries, we bought a Class C RV – 2019 Thor Freedom Elite 24FE. We enjoyed our week long camping trip in New Zealand in a small converted van with few amenities, so this seemed liked a good way to tour the US. We hope to visit family along the way and as many US National Parks as possible.

UPDATE – the Covid pandemic made travel more difficult for us. We were abroad for several months when the pandemic started and returned to the US in July 2020. After several months in the RV to visit Utah and Albuquerque NM, we moved east, bought a house on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and sold the RV. For 2021 and 2022 we tended to our new house and cottage, gardens and various boats including a 18’ 1977 Marshall Sanderling catboat and a 25’ Steiger Craft Chesapeake fishing boat, and kayaks and a canoe. Hopefully travel will start again one day!!

May 2022