Day 66 - Food For Thought
Trip Start
May 19, 2008
1
68
161
Trip End
Nov 08, 2008
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Ashland,
Montana,
United States
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The battlefield is inside the boundary of what is now the Crow Indian Reservation and from Little Bighorn we headed east passing through the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation, the scenery changing from wild grasslands to cultivated farmland. We also had to pass through an inordinately lengthy stretch of road works where the road had been covered in loose gravel chippings.
The Final Descent
We were not amused but thankfully Chip got through it un-chipped! Since we began this epic journey, our Chip has attracted his fair share of attention and quite rightly so. This has varied from a standard hand-raise, through a manically-waved hand or hands, to all types of VW signals, the most worrying of those being in California, where it appears that the conveyor of the greeting is putting two fingers up to you. Over the last few days we have also had a huge number of waves from motorcyclists, we reckon they must be members of the "Motorcyclists VW Appreciation Society". However, as we passed through the road works today, one of the Indian workmen saluted us! Most bizarre!
From the grasslands we passed back into forest, this time the Custer National Forest. A few miles before we arrived at our camp-site we received yet another wave, this time from a man with a dog sat under a tree by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Instinctively Mel waved back and Neil said "You do realise he'll be turning up at our camp-site later don't you".
So it was no surprise to Neil, when an hour or so after we arrived, so did our "friend". At that point there was only us and one other vehicle at the site, and of course the guy made his way to our end of the site. Despite being on foot, he was clean and neatly dressed and said hello as he walked passed. About another hour later he turned up at the bus, just after we had eaten, asking if we had any spare food. As we had eaten our last "meal" that we had on board, we only managed to produce a bit of bread and a couple of slices of beef. Feeling extremely guilty and thinking "that could be us", we ransacked the cupboards to see what else we could rustle up and Mel cooked up some noodles for him (and his dog), for which he was extremely grateful. It turned out that he was making his way from Seattle to Cleveland in Ohio and had been on the road two days. We don't know the rest of his story but as we say, it just makes you think, "that could so easily be one of us". It's a very fine line we all tread every day.
Miles travelled: 151
Total miles travelled: 5010
Days on road: 46
States visited: 9
National Parks visited: 8
