Custer's Last Stand, and a Trip to Red Lodge!

Today I have two adventures for you because they are both rather short.

One weekend, we went up to see the re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, also called (probably properly) the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The day was hot as hell, and I got a sunburn that I am still dealing with weeks later. It also gave me some funky tan lines.

For those of you that are either not American, or can’t remember learning about this in school, here’s the short version of what went down. Note, this is pretty simplified:

The Battle of the Little Bighorn was an armed fight between several Native American groups combined together and the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army. The Natives got tired of the white people taking their land and being generally mean to them, so they decided to take some action. Spoiler alert: the natives slaughtered General Custer and all his men. I think a couple of people survived but not many. I think that the numbers were like 2500 natives (ish, numbers are inexact) versus 700 Custer people.

Me and Sitting Bull

I live about an hour away from the site of the battle, and every year they host a re-enactment of the battle. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect, and have probably seen on TV, or in the movies. The guys (and a few women) dress up in 1870s clothes and ride their horses around and pretend to be back then. The whole thing takes about an hour and a half.

This guy is Custer.

It was the most awful thing I have ever seen.

I think it started with the terrible acting, which admittedly was really really bad. Or it could have been the comic (but wasn’t meant to be comic) shrieking as people were killed. One guy was literally like “Ow. Ow. OWWWWW.” and then fell over, pretending to be dead. It made me really uncomfortable, because it wasn’t supposed to be funny at all. It’s actually a tragedy.

In this particular scene, the native children are stealing Custer's shoes.

The cherry on the cake was as Sitting Bull is off killing Custer himself, they start playing God Bless the USA over the loudspeaker. Oh my god that is so inappropriate. I linked the song here, in case you aren't sure why I don't think this was okay:

Well. We went, but I don’t think we ever will again. I feel like it’s something you should experience once. But just once.

We also had a day trip out to Red Lodge, where my uncle has some property. It was a family day with my Grandparents, mom, my aunt, uncle, a cousin, and my aunt’s mother. My uncle is working almost constantly so he wasn’t around too much, but it ended up being okay. In Red Lodge, I bought some gifts to send to Beth and Kathleen back home. We went to the Montana Candy Emporium, which is the most majestic place on earth. You should go, it’s great. They do vintage candies, which I love, because it’s harder and harder to find necco and lemon heads. They also homemake a lot of chocolate there, like truffles and gourmet things like that, as well as rock candy and taffy. It’s really wonderful.

All the Candies!

We also took a bit of a hike along the river, because we felt the need to get active after eating candy for the day. It was lovely, and a really gorgeous day.

Are there any hidden stores where you can find your favourite hard to get item? Or maybe have you seen a play so bad that you cringe when you think about it?