Our first trip out into the Big Horn country took us to the Crow Reservation Agency, near a town called Hardin, in Montana.

Whilst we didn’t visit the site of the Custer battle with the Native Americans, having visited it last time we were ‘out west’, when we saw the signs for it, we were reminded of how our little dog Millie, found the name Little Bighorn, rather confusing, as we think she mentioned when she was writing the Blog!

She couldn’t get her head around, how something could be called ‘Little’ and ‘Big’ at the same time!

Pretty soon, we were cutting across the North East corner of Wyoming, towards South Dakota, where a rather astonishing discovery was awaiting us.

This will take some believing, but when we arrived at our next destination, in the town of Custer, in South Dakota.

Who should we find on the RV site, but Millie’s old friend Trouper and his Mum and Dad!!!!!

Well, we didn’t realise it was his Dad, because he had lost his razor, but had run out of money and couldn’t afford to buy another, so he had grown a beard!!

Just joking! Well not about the beard, just about it being a surprise them being there!! – When we decided to cut back on our trip East across Canada and head back South in the USA, we emailed them to see where they were and imagine our surprise, when they said, that they were directly in the path that we had decided to take South East back to Florida, so we arranged to meet.

 We spent a couple of great days with them exploring Mount Rushmore

Crazy Horse Monument

Wind Cave National Park

And a great evening Magic Show in town, that taught the Driver/Hunter a few new tricks!!

All too soon, the couple of days with our friends were over and we were off again, from South Dakota into Nebraska.

The trip took us South over endless miles of Prairie, again, with Buffalo, Prong Horn Antelope, Elk and loads and loads of Prairie Dogs.

We were originally following the old Buffalo Trading trail, where during the early 1800’s, the Native Americans ‘sold’ Buffalo hides to the American Fur Company, for shipping back East on wagon trains.

Later on the trip, we ended up along the old Immigrant West Trail and the Cattle Driving trail towards the Hidden Gem of a ‘real’ old Cowboy town called Ogallala – no, we hadn’t heard of it before researching for this trip either, because Hollywood didn’t make any films about it!

As you can see above, between 1870 and around 1885, about 1 million cattle (between 60,000 and 100,000 every year) were driven up from Texas into Ogallala, to be loaded onto the newly built railroad, again for shipping back East, or a few driven onwards, up North, to the newly formed Native American Reservations.

All these cowboys, had to have somewhere to let off steam and ‘blow’ their wages from the long cattle drives and Ogallala provided it – along with the wild behaviour and shootings that accompanied it.

The ‘original’ Boot Hill is even right here (it pre-dates the ones at Deadwood, Tombstone by about 15 years!!!) and which had its first recorded burial, of three railway workers massacred by Lakota Indians on the 27th May 1867.

As the name suggests, it is on the hill overlooking the old town.

It got its name from the fact that the Cowboys, shot and killed in the area during this time, were traditionally buried with their Boots ON!

We think this is one of the original ‘Boots’ – honest!

Rather nostalgically, we found an old grave marker, of a William Campbell, who was killed in a gun fight and who died 140 years to the day, 1^st August, that we were there looking around the Boot Hill cemetery – RIP William.

Just north of the town is one of the largest man-made lakes in the US, Lake McConaughy, which provides much of the water needed to provide irrigation for the farmlands for about 100 mile radius – changing something once called a ‘Dust Bowel’ into something now called the ‘Bread Basket’ of America.

All too soon it is time to move on, further south, but more on that later – bye.