Our Summer Vacation 2010 Day 7

Day 7-Thursday July 8

We stopped in Hardin MT for lunch.  Ate our hot dogs at a little park.  We found it right across the street from the LDS Chapel we discovered by accident. 

Display of soldier's tent

We went to Little Bighorn National Monument.  The kids thought the museum was interesting.  There were displays of old soldier costumes, as well as indian warrior costumes.  Bridger absolutely loved the dioramas of the battle.  He looked at them over and over again, and kept pointing out new horses he saw with arrows in their sides, and which soldiers had fallen off of their horses.

Some of the weapons they used

The part I found fascinating was a display about some anthropological studies they had done.  In the 80’s they found some new remains.  They used some new technologies to recreate the person’s face in 3D.  There were 2. One of them they were able to identify after the recreation by comparing his face to old photos.  The other one they haven’t identified yet.  The display had the 3D models of their faces all in color.  It was amazing.

Pompey’s Pillar National Monument, Montana.   I have always loved the story of Sacagawea.  Grandpa Harker gave me a huge book about her when I was in grade school, and she fascinated me.  I even did a totally optional History Fair project on her and the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 5th grade.  I was sad to see that we were going to miss Pompey’s Pillar because of our detour off of I90 down to Little Bighorn. But my sweet husband knew I wanted to see it and so he backtracked 30 miles so I could see it.  There was a very long stair case that was built so you could walk right up to where William Clark carved his name and the year into the rock.  He was the one who named it Pompey’s Pillar, after Sacagawea’s son who he had nicknamed Pompey.

William Clark's name

Next we drove to Billings, Montana.  We drove around the town and found the Billings LDS Temple.  It was very beautiful.


We left the kids in the hotel eating pizza, while Rex and I went to the only restaurant we could find that was still open after 10 p.m..  It was called Old Chicago, and they had great steak and shrimp.  And they had this cocktail sauce that was so spicy it made your nose run!  They called it Chipotle Cocktail Sauce.  It was great!