Five Little Monkeys: Ohio Trip 2009 part I

Friday, August 21, 2009

Ohio Trip 2009 part I

Here is the documentation of the longest trip in our 11 year history. It may never happen again, so pay close attention.
After a false start because Dan forgot his wallet, we left Saturday, July 25th, and headed eastward towards the mountains of Montana. We made it to Billings. 805 miles. 14 long hours. Heidi cried a lot because she was still sick with croup. (Standing on the huge tires stacked behind the motel)
Because Dan is a cruel task master, we got up early on Sunday morning, fought with the kids, packed up, had a small devotional and headed back on our journey. I noticed on the map that we would be passing right past the Battle of Little Bighorn National Monument. It was just before lunch time, so we stopped and made it part of our experience. I loved it-- loved the history, felt the reverence of a battleground graveyard. The kids were hot and bored. Morgan kept trying to kill grasshoppers. Alison got blisters. Heidi didn't cry, but only because she was so happy to be out of her carseat. The first picture is of the battleground where Custer had is last stand. The marker with the black is his falling place, though his body is buried in a National Cemetery back east. There are markers scattered all over the monument land. Even some for the horses. Sad commentary, but the Native American markers are the latest addition. We took tons of pictures, but (whew!) will not bore you with my history obsession. The last picture is of Dan and the kids in front of the Native American monument.

Hot, tired, but full of food, we continued on our journey. Dan wanted to go to Devil's Tower National Monument. A small detour, but well worth it. Here is the legend behind it: 7 little Indian princesses were playing with their brother. Suddenly, he turned into an enormously gigantic bear. He began chasing his sisters who prayed that they would be saved. In answer, the ground was shoved up underneath them until it reached the sky. The bear clawed and tried to climb, but to no avail. The princesses, now in the sky, became the constellation Pleides. The bear became the Big Dipper. Malynn loves this story and was quite concerned. The real story is this. Millions of years ago, magma began pushing upward. It never formed a volcano, because it never broke the surface. In time, erosion sluffed off the dirt and plant life around it. There are two more mounds there at the monument which haven't lost their dirty covering. Amazing however you look at it!

The middle picture shows the striations or the marks left by the bear. The last one is as zoomed as our dinky camera could go to show the eagles circling the top.