Today is David's and my 21st anniversary.  We spent it on the road--from South Dakota to Billings, Montana.   Before we left South Dakota we HAD to visit Sturgis,  As we entered Sturgis, I noticed a storefront that said "burgers and pasties."  I thought that they were selling burgers and "pastries" and "pastie"s was a local word for pastries.  After I saw the second sign for "pasties for sale", I remembered where I was--Sturgis!   You can wear pasties instead of a shirt.  NO, I didn't buy any!!

We left Sturgis and made our way thru a bit of Wyoming and then Montana.  Montana was great expanses of open fields.  There were cattle, sheep and horses grazing.  Hay bales lay over the landscape.  There were also lots of beehives.   I got to see my first pronghorn antelopes!  By the time I could get a camera out, they were gone.  We traveled on a secondary road for most of this part of the trip.  One word of caution "make sure you fill up your gas tank before heading out!"  The distances between towns and gas stations are BIG!  No, we didn't run out of gas but it was a close.

About an hour out of Billings, we stopped at Custer's Land Stand Memorial.  You were able to drive through the battlefield. AND I got to see horses that were freely grazing along the trail.  Again, I wasn't keen on going to a battlefield but it was somewhat spiritual.  We got to listen to an awesome park ranger reenact Custer's Last Stand.

 Custer's Last Stand--they buried about 200 soldiers under the monument

 Indian gravestone

 Herd of horses along the road

 People left tokens for the fallen warriors

 The white gravestones were for the Calvary

 Sturgis

 Montana--southern part

 The Memorial for the Native Americans that fought Custer

Custer and his remaining men killed their horses
 to use the horse's bodies to protect them from the attacking Indians.

We got to our KOA campground around 7:00.  It's on the Yellowstone River.  It's the first KOA --it was started in 1962.  They were cooking dinner.  David had steak and I had rainbow trout.  It was our "Happy Anniversary" dinner.

We only have about 400 miles before we get to Glacier National Park.  We check in on the 25th.  We are stopping in Great Falls, Montana and then staying in St. Mary's campground.  This will be a leisurely drive to Glacier.