East of Yellowstone, you run into the town of Cody, named after the famous wild west man, William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill.  He started life out as a frontiersman, hunting, exploring and generally having a great time.  The reason that most of us have heard of him are due to the tall tales that were written of his so called exploits and then subsequent travelling Wild West show which turned this runabout, common person into an international star.  In Cody there is a very nice museum not only dedicated to Buffalo Bill but also to the Indian's that inhabited the area as well as the climate, condition and flora and fauna that also persist here.  It was very interesting to walk around in.  But time wasn't on our side and the museum closed at 17H00 so we needed to leave.  Further east on the following day we went to the Little Bighorn National Monument, the place where General Custer had his last stand.  Once again it's a story that most of us have heard about but probably only from the American's side.  We were determined to see as much of it as we could from the Indian's point of view.  And when you read about it, the Indian's did nothing wrong, all they were doing was defending themselves from an unprovoked attack.  However great the outcome seemed to the Indian though it was the final time that there ever won a battle against the all powerful American.  Great names like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse eventually gave themselves upto the American's to try and bring peace to the area.  The Indian resevations were greatly reduced, to basically any land without a valuable resource and that's including there once reliable buffalo resource.  It's a pity that the same people that saw the wisdom in creating National Parks in 1872 to preserve a natural wonder could only 4 years later basically wipe out a Natives way of living.  The whole situation at Little Bighorn is well laid out and informative and since 2004 has included the Indian side to battle, not just Custer's 'herioc last stand'.

Further on is Devil's Tower, the famous spaceship landing site of Steve Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', and also where Paul from 'Paul' get's picked up to be taken home.  To the local Indians it looks like it does because a giant bear was trying to get to the top and it's claws left behind the marks that we see.  Since then we all know that is magma cooled that was pushed up through the surface a long long time ago.  Either way it's something to behold.  It's not very big and once you've seen it, you've seen it, so after only an hour or so we headed off to the next location, Mt Rushmore in South Dakota.  Mt Rushmore is a sculpture that took 14 long years to complete, well complete in a engineering sense not a mathematical one, that enough was done that people could stand back and go wow rather than having it completely completed to the intial design.  I hadn't expected that we would come all this way into South Dakota so I wasn't really expecting to see it on this trip but to be here and viewing it from the platform, and not a computer screen, was a sort of 'can't believe I'm here' moment, but only briefly.  I usually reserve those moments for something that is really excellent, not just good.  Mt Rushmore is situated in the Black Hills.  These same hills caused the attack on Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse because at some point someone found gold here.  This area was particularly important to the Indians and they didn't want to give it over to the American's.  It was part of a treaty signed in 1870 that allowed this area to be part of Indian Territories and rightfully theirs.  But gold is gold and an ultimatum was sent out to the Indians to remove themselves or be classed as enemies.  This all lead to Custer coming in doing his thing.  Today the Black Hills are still sacred but not owned by the Indians, instead they are largely covered by National Forest Reserve.  At the moment, and for probably another 2 or 3 generations, Crazy Horse is slowly appearing out of the side of a mountain.  This is easily larger than Mt Rushmore and probably a fitting memorial to a great Indian leader, but I won't be alive to see it finished.

The next morning we went to have a tour of Jewel Cave, currently the 3rd longest cave in the world with over 260km's of tunnels mapped out.  Audrey and I have been to a few caves now and Jewel Cave compared to some in France, and even Skojcan Cave in Slovenia, is shit.  My Mum always said that if you can't say something good say nothing at all.  -------

We start heading back into the awesome National Parks in Utah and northern Arizona tomorrow which is why we are spending the 5 weeks in this area.  Arches, we are coming ....