Two Girls Roving: Day 1 – Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Two Girls Roving: The tale of a 16 day, 3522 mile road trip to the Pacific Northwest in celebration of my friend’s college graduation! Follow along for all the shenanigans through thousands of miles, eight National Park Service units, night after night of camping, and even some coastal backpacking!

August 23, 2024

After nearly a year of planning, the morning had arrived! Janice schemed a big trip to celebrate graduating from college, and I was enlisted to play travel agent (always a dangerous request, as my mode of travel is nothing but relaxing!), navigator, and adventure buddy. Though wildfires in the North Cascades forced us to move to Plan B… then Plan C… then Plan D… and back to Plan C (really C and a half), it was shaping up to be an awesome trip. Janice pulled up bright and early to my house where I had an alarming amount of gear spread out in my backyard, and we took to playing one heck of a game of Tetris fitting everything into her Range Rover (hence the blog series name of Two Girls Roving… it was originally going to be “Two Girls, One Camry” before she got a new car and I realized maybe to keep it more PG on my blog, ha!). At 7am we headed north from Cheyenne.

Transiting across Wyoming is always a long chore, and we did it under smoky skies due to wildland fires in northern Wyoming while wasting away the miles with murder mystery podcasts – which were great until there was one about women traveling to a national park. We changed to medical mysteries after that one. To break up a very long day of driving to Butte, Montana, we stopped in at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument preserves the site of the June 25 and 26, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn. During this battle 263 soldiers, including Lt. Col. George A. Custer and attached personnel of the US Army, died fighting several thousand Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. For the sake of brevity, the whole story can be read here on the NPS website.

We made a beeline for the visitor center (a temporary one as they remodel the building so museum exhibits were closed) and then enjoyed a tuna sandwich lunch before exploring. Temperatures were blistering under smoky skies, but we were committed to exploring as much as we could. Since our car was parked by the Custer National Cemetery, we wandered through there first.

A 4.5 mile drive takes you out to the Reno-Benteen Battlefield. There are stops along the way that one can follow along with an audio tour. Janice and I stopped at several on the outbound leg, and then realized coming inbound we could pull up to the interpretative signs in the car. I would read them aloud from the passenger seat. Great way to stay in the A/C! (Also great this can be done for those with mobility difficulties!)

Our final stop at this national monument was finding parking and walking over to Last Stand Hill and the Indian Memorial. (I do want to note the only parking on Last Stand Hill is ADA-only, and sadly, many people without ADA placards were using the parking… don’t do this.)

The Indian Memorial across from the 7th Cavalry Memorial commemorates the sacrifice of the Arikara, Apsaalooke (Crow), Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Oyate (Lakota Sioux) tribes in the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they fought to protect their diverse values and traditional way of life.

Overall, we enjoyed our stop at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Janice is a war history buff, and I’ll just always enjoy wandering around outside (I’ll openly admit I am not much into battlefields and war history, but I do enjoy learning more about Native American history and experiences). I do think I had visited as a child as I faintly remembered certain areas, but I decided to count it as a new NPS unit visit nonetheless. It was pretty busy with visitors, which kind of surprised me until I critically thought about how it is situated perfectly for those heading to Glacier or Yellowstone National Parks, or Devils Tower National Monument.

With our one planned activity for the day done, it was time to drive four hours down I-90 to Butte. The scenery turned from open plains to mountainous as we drove in and out of storms, trying to predict the medical mystery on the podcast. Because we were tent camping, we opted to just not wing overnight locations, so I had reserved a site at the KOA in Butte. (All overnight stays were reserved or chosen in advance except for the very final night of the trip… I am definitely a planner in that sense! I was played the recreation.gov 8am dance six months out for several very popular places on this trip!)

Arriving in Butte in the early evening, we picked up some groceries and beverages at Safeway before heading to the KOA. Our campsite neighbor was a thru-hiker of the Continental Divide Trail which was pretty neat (it blows my mind that people can walk for thousands of miles!). He asked me if I could tell he was thru-hiking by how he smelled, which caused me to chuckle. Then he asked if we were driving north by any chance… we weren’t, and honestly, Janice and I could barely fit ourselves in the car, let alone a hitchhiker!

The next day would be another long day of driving across Montana, skipping through Idaho, and arriving halfway through Washington, so bedtime was early!

Travel states, facts, & things with no context from Janice and I:

• ~695 miles and 10 hours-ish
• 1 NPS unit visited
  • Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
    • $25 fee or America the Beautiful Pass
• “Mike’s last stand”
• Liquid in motion

Accommodations for the night:

• Butte KOA Journey
  • $60.48 total (2024)
  • The good:
    • Showers (albeit cold when Janice and I showered in the early morning… but very large and clean with an amazing waterfall shower head… the nicest KOA showers I’ve ever seen, and I’ve stayed in a lot of KOAs throughout the country)
    • Camp store with lots of local gifts, and pizza delivery to your campsite
    • Close to Safeway
    • Walking/biking path access
  • The bad:
    • On the side of I-90/I-15 which makes it incredibly noisy if sleeping in a tent. Ear plugs are a must.
    • The tent sites that include power/water were extremely close together… then again, this is a KOA, not a wilderness experience.