Extreme Western History Adventures
Not your everyday tourist experience!
By: Jana Bommersbach 05/01/2009
Imagine it’s June 25, 1876-the fateful day of George Custer’s ill-fated Battle at the Little Bighorn in Montana. You are waking up from the last campsite Custer ever slept in, on your seven-day excursion tracing the general and his cavalry on the last days of their lives. You ride on your horse to Crow’s Nest, where, in the clear, predawn hours, Crow scouts discover the enormous Indian village down below: “big village, big trouble.” The scouts on your trip are descendants of the originals, who told Custer they saw so many ponies, “it was like worms crawling through the grass.” Custer went ahead anyway—one of many mistakes he made that day.
Your trip continues to Medicine Tail Coulee, where you and your fellow soldiers try to flank the village, like Custer unsuccessfully attempted to do. “You are right there,” says Steve Shaw, organizer of “Custer’s Ride to Glory” held every June. “And it’s so much like it was back 150 years ago. There’s no roads, no telephone.”
Then you get to “fight and die,” as Shaw puts it. Or as a Southwest Florida participant Donn Crothers remembers it: “There were plenty of Indians to fight with and lots of gunsmoke and dust and horses running everywhere to excite any cowboy of any age.”
“This really is riding into history,” Shaw says. “You feel so bad for those soldiers, trying to form skirmish lines, trying to protect Custer, and yet you know they’re not going to make it.”
When we dream of wonderful vacations, most of us imagine going someplace we know, like a place at the lake or a trip to the family cabin. Perhaps we’ll visit the local heritage and cultural museums or ride some horses. We’ll certainly have time for naps. For most of us, that’s our idea of fun.
Sure, vacations should be fun, but shouldn’t they also be exciting and new and maybe even challenging? Shouldn’t they be a clean break from the ordinary? Shouldn’t vacations go for the gusto?
And we don’t mean your grandpa’s gusto. Here’s what we do mean.
We mean standing at the very spot where Custer’s 7th Calvary was wiped out in 1876, wearing their same uniform, carrying their same weapons and watching as Sioux rush out from the Little Bighorn to “kill” you.
Too much gusto?
How about you experience what the pioneers did, as they moved west in lumbering wagons, on a covered wagon adventure in Kansas, through the nation’s last tallgrass prairie?
Or would you like to work shoulder-to-shoulder with archaeologists in Crow Canyon, Colorado, to unearth Anasazi artifacts buried for 700 years?
Or maybe you want to join Global Volunteers to help improve life for the Blackfeet Nation in Montana?
And what could be more popular in these hard economic times than panning for gold in a Klondike Gold Rush boomtown?
That’s just a sampling of the amazing adventures we’ve collected to give you a new perspective on Western “vacations” for years to come.
Great adventures are out there, awaiting great adventurers, with memories that will last a lifetime.
Comments (3)
What do you say to this :
"Custer Had It Coming " !
Excellent article Jana, very much in the spirit of truly experiencing the Old West. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.
Steven Keig
http://www.old-west-trail.com
is it true that Custer's soldiers were found inside the bodies of their dead horses which they cut open and climed inside to not be found and killed by the indians?
Post A Comment