Under A Sky So Blue

So Story lies on the eastern edge of the Bighorn Mountains, the easternmost range of the Rockies, in between and equidistant from the towns of Buffalo and Sheridan. Every road in town, except one, turns into dirt a mile or two outside of town and stops abruptly in a dead end. Appropriately so, the one lonely continuous road in town is a dirt road that doesn’t really seem to connect Story to anything that couldn’t be taken through another route. But it does go past the Wagon Box Fight Historical Site, a famous battle in 1867 between the U.S. Army and Lakota (Sioux) Indian tribes who were under the leadership of Crazy Horse and Little Wolf (there is speculation that Red Cloud had also played a part in the attacks though the truth behind this was never confirmed). Although the Sioux Indians had a larger army (estimated at 2,000), the U.S. had recently acquired new weaponry that the Lakota did not know about and could not match. The 9th Infantry, comprised of 31 men and protected only by 14 wagons lying end to end in a circle, survived repeated attacks by the Sioux. It is reported by Captain James Powell that his infantry of 31 killed an estimated 60 Sioux and injured another 120, although there was never a clear establishment of the true numbers of the encounter.

Boy do I get distracted…
Anyway, most of the other dead end roads in town lead to either historical sites or trailheads that enter the valleys of Bighorn National Forest. This has been a pretty convenient situation for us motorhome owners being that it’s not real practical to take down the awning and batten down the hatches to make a mere two mile jaunt to enjoy the trails within the forest. It adds three or four miles of road walking to the excursion but that’s definitely not a bad thing and the dogs certainly aren’t complaining about it.



We’ve all had a great time cruising the trails of the national forest, climbing hills that are higher than anything else we’ve hiked so far and taking in spectacular vistas of rolling dry land hills that seem to stretch the whole way to South Dakota.



Some hikes took us along creeks gushing with mountain melt off.





Some took us along ridges that led into fields of wildflowers and grasses. And there were always those idyllic spots to stop and eat lunch or think about our next move after Story, where we want to spend the fall and winter months. We knew from the beginning of the trip that this time would come, to consider our over wintering options, to consider what is most practical, most realistic for the next six months or so.
We originally thought we’d like to make it to the southwest for the winter season. Maybe store the Ultrastar in an RV Park, maybe get jobs, hang out in the desert for a while. But the way things have gone so far, with us sticking to the goal of going slow and stopping often, has put us in a slightly precarious situation. Here we sit, just east of the Bighorn’s, Bitterroot’s and the Cascades and north of the Rockies, during a time of year that can see weather changes quicker than a blink of an eye. It’s been getting into the low 40’s or upper 30’s most nights during the last two weeks, just an inkling of what to expect real soon as the norm. Yellowstone was even shut down for a day last week due to substantial snowfall. And we know this is just the beginning of a long winter for this region of the country. Do we make a run for it and continue through Wyoming and Idaho and hope that we don’t get stuck in a situation that we can’t dig ourselves out of? Do we zigzag around mountain passes in Colorado and Utah in hopes of finding a clear path to the southwest? Do we backtrack a bit to see what comes of that direction?
A decision will eventually be made and no matter what it is, it doesn’t really matter, because there is really no “wrong” choice here. Like they say, if it’s worth the going, it’s worth the ride.