Little Bighorn!
I’m a huge fan of history. And my reading list generally demonstrates this, with lots of historical analysis and biographies. Since I grew up in Canada, I found that my knowledge of US history was a bit less developed than I would have liked it to be. So I embarked on a decade long reading list to rectify this and I’ve learned much.
One of the great events in that history was the Battle of the Little Bighorn (or the Battle of the Greasy Grass if you talk to the victors). This one event demonstrates much of our national character (both good and bad) and is one you must understand to get the settling of the west. I’ve read quite a few books covering Custer, Sheridan, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and so I wanted to share that with my boys.
We did the ranger battlefield talk and then took the Bighorn College bus tour of the extended battlesite as well, and the latter was really well done, illustrating in a way the former just couldn’t do as we moved along the ridge tops over looking the valley below. One could almost see the myriad of teepees down below as the guide recounted the days events over 130 years go.
Here are a few pictures...
Oh, and its always good
to throw in a tether ball tournament. Hat tip to
Napoleon!
Devils Tower
The monument is an imposing feature as you approach. I guess being a solitary, five thousand foot monolith of igneous rock will do that for you, and there is little doubt as to why it became our nation’s first National Monument. Just awesome.
The Native American story of its formation is quite interesting:
“American Indian legends tell of six Lakota Sioux girls who were picking flowers when they were chased by bears. Feeling sorry for them, the Great Spirit raised the ground beneath the girls. The bears tried to climb the rock, but fell off, leaving their scratch marks on the sides.”
Our campground was right at the base of the tower, so we got some great pictures as some clouds rolled in.
The next morning we hiked around the formation, scrambled on the rocks at its base and just enjoyed its splendor. The boys were suitably impressed.
A few pictures from our day’s activities are in order...
Tomorrow we head for the
Custer Battlefield site in southeastern Montana.
PS. My younger two boys bought US Deputy Marshal
badges. Strangely, my oldest declined to buy one as
well. I guess the 14 year old girls wouldn’t be
impressed by his deputization, although he is denying
it.
The Gentlemen with Mustaches
Road Trip!
Many years ago, I read somewhere an account written by an historian who remembered going out with his family to interesting sites from American history and camping in a VW van for extended periods of time. They were there to absorb everything to do with the important events found there - from research to hiking to just living amidst these places sharpened his senses and awareness of what it is to be an American.
I resolved a few years ago to do likewise (or at least within the confines of my hectic schedule). We generally head out without anything more than a rough plan, download some audiobooks on the subject and pack the VW van. Last year we hit southern Colorado (Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes NM and a variety of places in between - blogged here...) and had an absolute ball. The boys still talk about it and I fully expect them to in 40 years. That of course, is my goal.
This year it was the Black Hills - literally an island of trees in a sea of grass.
I’d read several books on the settling of the west in the past two years, so we headed for this area rich in history and conflict. The Black Hills were a sacred place for the Native Americans who lived on the plains - and for obvious reasons. We found a place rich in natural beauty. The rugged rolling hills, the pine trees and above all the rock formations made for an amazing experience. It was here in the 1860s that General George Custer (yeah, that guy) lead an expedition formally identifying the place as a gold mecca, and opening it to increased mining, settlement and conflict with the Sioux.
The Black Hills also house several peculiar American sites: Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument. We visited both. I was a bit curious as to how i’d respond. The conservationist in me considered the carving up of a perfectly beautiful mountain as a bit much. However, it is a very Amercian thing, what with our ideas of subjugating the land for our own purposes. I recognize the issues with that, but still, it was pretty darn impressive and both monuments house some pretty high ideals in their competing natures. The kids loved both, but I think Rushmore was a bit more impressive due to the spectacular grounds at the monument and the fact that it was more complete. Crazy Horse’s grounds were a bit less impressive, but the scope of this in 50 years may dwarf the former. All three boys resolved to return when they have kids to see how its going.
Then we headed north to Deadwood, SD. Yes, I’d watched the HBO series (or at least part of it until the raciness got to me) and I love me a good western historical town with museums, old buildings and the like.
Complete disappointment. Apparently its just a crappy gambling town now with casinos littering the historic mainstreet and completely spoiling it. I was hoping for more of a Tombstone thing, but got Vegas with plastic spurs. Now I realize that in some sense one could argue this was historically accurate for the Deadwood of frontier times, but meh. It sucked. We couldn’t even find a good restaurant to eat in. The only one we even considered had a snotty hostess so we left. I’m not going to overpay for crappy foodservice burgers an do so obviously as an annoyance to some teenager.
So we left after less than 30 minutes.
Destination: The Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. More tomorrow...
Here are a few pictures...
PS. Book for this segment of the roadtrip: Terrible Glory. A wonderful
book on Custer and his shenanigans in the region.
PSS. If you see my boys wearing the same clothes on
multiple days, I’m trying 
Apologies to my dear wife.
Sayulita, Sayulita!
Viva Mexico!
The whole SmugGang headed south for our yearly retreat. And by gang I mean fifty some odd people, families and spouses included,installed in a variety of fun beach houses for a week of fun and work.
Today we’re sitting by the pool, listening to the surf pound the beach and just having a ball.
Here are a few pictures from this morning...
Its not my fault.
This is what I walked into yesterday afternoon in our front room. I have no idea what he was doing, but he was doing some kung-fu stuff with his shirt in the Cornholio position and had decorated his torso with kid-toos.
Shrug. Welcome to my world.
Psst. She’s right.
Ah Sunday!
Alias: The best day of the week.
I love Sundays. We set them apart to be the family day. We go to church, we have dinner with the extended family and then generally we play games for a few hours before bed. Sprinkle in some reading/nap time and you’ve got yourself a real winner.
Tonight was game night, and my youngest was inordinately excited about the devastating effect of a Skip card...
Pinewood Redux
I’d made a bunch of modifications to Steen’s car to make it faster, and I’d hate to have seen what it was like without them, because it came in a solid 4th place in every heat.
Out of 4.
You could tell my boy was a bit put off by the whole thing, but he kept a stiff upper lip and had fun anyhow. Poor guy. I guess next year.
Here are a few picts:
I think the highlight of
the evening is when one boy, distraught at an even
poorer performance than ours sat *on* the track and
then proceeded to stick his arm out and block cars as
they headed down the runway. I kid you not.
Sometimes I wonder about parents who sit idly by and
let their kids act out in such an egregious fashion.
I’m told he has “anger management” issues.
No kidding?
The Pinewood Derby Approacheth
In the past, with my oldest son, we’ve done it all in the ramp up to this hallowed race of races. We’ve worked on the car weeks in advance. We’ve worked on it the night before. A few years ago, we even did some internet research and came up with some best practices for speed inducement. It worked.
So this week, while working on the latest iteration of our car, we applied all the know-how acquired in hopes of making a splash tonight.
He’s certainly excited, and he even claims his hand is a bit sore from sanding.
So here is our entry, all glossed up and ready to roll. Well I say glossed up, even though we forgot to actually lacquer it in our race to get the wheels on. Ooops.
I wanted to play around
with a new product lighting trick, and it seemed to
work quite nicely - this is one light, product left
with a reflector resting on the top of the soft box
and angling down to the seamless. Worked pretty good.
I was looking to blow out some of the silver paint
and it did exactly what I wanted. Nice.
Off to the races...
Crazy Hair Day!
We love crazy hair day in our house, becasue we know how to do it seriously. While some kids will tease up some area and apply a bit of hairspray or spray sparkles on it, their “crazy” is limited by a) boring parental background and b) risk taking adverseness.
My kids? Not so much.
After all, my wife and are children of the PUNK ROK generation. We are no strangers to shaving hair off in goofy ways, coloring it inappropriately (before that became socially acceptable)and in general doing anything that many would consider horrifically permanent. And to some, the day after Crazy Hair Day would be traumatic.
But not for our kids. Because we’ve done monstrous things to our hair growing up and realize it grows back.
So Steen hit me up this AM for something new and radical. Last year was pretty damn cool, so it was time to come up with something new. Luckily, we had a bit more hair to work with than last year.
So here is this year’s edition...
We actually trimmed in
between each spike - so its like a straight line of
checkerboard spikes. ha ha. Awesome. He can impale
things with those spikes. Some parents just don’t
have gravity defying skillz like I have. Having a 12”
tall mohawk teaches you all kinds of things...
As a counterpoint to
this, Chloe didn’t feel so crazy this year (she has a
ballet competition in a few weeks) so we quickly did
only a bit of silly with some random pony tails and
some blue dye. Turns out my kids are more
responsible than their parents.
Thanksgiving!
This year we packed up Wednesday and went to Montana to hang out with my family (well most of it, one of my sisters was AWOL). Its mostly a tradition at this point. Its a few days of eating good food, hanging around and playing way to much Wii.
Not to be outdone from last year's festival of lazy, we threw in a movie marathon to seal the overdone media blitz and watched all 16 hours of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (in their extended version glory). It involved late nights and sleeping in too. Fun.
We also generally take the time to all go down to my brother's office (he’s an eye doctor) and get a few eye exams taken care of. Apart from doing some shots for my brother's practice, we also do a fair amount of goofing around, as evidenced by the following pictures. It kinda goes like this: find the goofiest frames, equipment etc. and ham it up.
Ok, we also always do the
Turkey Trot 5K, so it isn't like we just sat around
and vegged.
PS. My son finally beat me in the race. By almost 2
minutes. I guess my "don't over train by not training
at all" theory is shot to pieces.
Mutton Bustin' and Other Fair Tales
This is *the* fair in the Seattle area. Or so I’ve heard, because we’ve never been. It is hardly our kinda thing.
Its big, its popular and crowded. Reason enough to stay away.
However, last year my sis-in-law took her kids to the fair and they came back with tales of “mutton bustin” which I soon learned was analogous to bull riding, only for kids. And on sheep. They even had a video of his triumphal ride. It was hilarious in a slightly disturbing way...
So this year, as they rolled in, my two younger boys wanted to give it a go. And since we’re all about providing opportunities, K hustled them off to the attraction, got em suited up and ready to roll.
Steen did fine, although he hit the ground pretty quick. No records there...
Liam was getting settled, when his sheep reared up and got half way out of the cage. That freaked him out. So we spent the next few minutes letting him think about it.
He decided not to, which
was fine by us. What a weird ritual...
Here are a few other shots from the fair...
A Visit to Polson Family Eyecare
Well, he recently graduated from optometry school back in Ohio and moved back west to start his own eye-umachacallit-dealio. He wanted somewhere that was close to the families in Canada (his wife is also Canadian- from a town that makes ours look huge) and Polson, MT seemed to fit the bill nicely. Happily, he found an older doctor that was retiring and bought the practice. Its nice to have him back in the west so we can see him on our twice-yearly bike trips to Moab.
This is him trying to ride as expertly as I do. The form is flawed, as is the technique, but you can’t fault him for trying. I kid, I kid.
Polson is on the south end of Flathead Lake in
northwestern Montana. This is a very familiar place,
as we spent a lot of time as kids tromping thru this
area. Some friends had a cabin on a lake near by and
we’d always go down once or twice a year to ski, swim
and muck around. Its only about 3 hours from Cardston
and is just a lovely place to visit. Its very
Montana, with the Rockies staring down at you and
pine trees galore. The Kalispell environs bring back
lots of good memories.
So anywhooo, we stopped by his business for some
quick check-ups - my daughter was in need of some new
glasses and we ran the others thru as well. Being who
I am, I yanked out the Canon and snapped some fun
pictures of the kids trying on goofy frames and doing
the check up thing.
A few more here...
Hey, its the weekend almost! Huzzah! Have a good one...
Micro Soccer Begins
Here are a few pictures from Friday’s meet-up...
Not to be outdone, my
youngest was in fine form as well...
Such a proud moment. I
have no idea what he was up to...
