Roustabouts and US.

Yesterday began with a trip west to Sterling, Colorado. A swim in a fresh water lake, A night visit to a bloody battlefield and Mona and I trying our hand at calf roping by the midnight light of the HUGE full moon.

We agreed it was an auspicious way to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary!

The Sterling Library has some of the most impressive solid tree trunk sculptings we've ever seen. INSIDE!

The Overland Trail Museum kept Mona busy with her book while I rambled through the buildings.  Guess:  How many 150 year old schoolrooms, stores, and homes have I photographed since we left Douglassville on June 8th?  Mona's answer: Maybe enough?  My answer: But there's one more in the next town!

 Sterling is known for it's 115 year old courthouse building and, among other less important things, the J & L Cafe. Open since 1936 this really GREAT old time local diner served up the perfect Anniversary meal!  Real, warmed up, blueberry and cherry pie and ice cream!





 A 20 minute drive north took us to the quiet North Sterling State Park where we actually found a BEACH in Colorado.  Hallelujah the beach chairs finally got used! I swam, Mona read and photoed some of the beautiful white pelicans who dive for                                                               their dinner on the water.

It was getting dark but Mona agreed we should head south into more cattle country and visit the site of the 1869 Summit Springs Battlefield. Maybe we'd see some wildlife on the way.  Well, I saw a jack rabbit, and we saw tame life, as in beef cattle.  And when we got within about 2 miles of the battlefield we found the road chained off (private land) and it was getting dark.  So what else could we do?

 Mona read in the car and I walked the lonely, beautiful prairie, back to the scene of Buffalo Bill's final Indian war battle. General Carr and his 300 5th US Cavalry and Pawnee scouts, with Bill, surprised the 450 Cheyenne Dog soldiers and their families camp  in the early dawn hours of July 11, 1869 in a hollow 30 miles south of what would become the town of Sterling. The Logan County Seat, a rail stop on the Santa Fe Line, and most recently a rest stop on I-76.

It was here that the leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, Tall Bull (Hotóa'ôxháa'êstaestse in Cheyenne and Tatonka Haswa in his second nation's tongue, Sioux), was killed, and the Cheyenne Wars effectively ended. It was here also that 51 other Cheyenne died that day, and one white woman captive, Susanna Alderdice. She had been taken with a friend and her daughter by the Cheyenne in a raid in Lincoln county, Kansas several months before, partly in reprisal for the Sand Creek, Colorado, Massacre of several years before. The daughter had been killed as too young to carry as a prisoner and Susanna's friend survived an attempted killing as the 5th cavalry attacked. The remaining Cheyenne were herded onto their reservation on the barren Oklahoma wasteland. One soldier was wounded, none killed.

The statistics don't prove the super human power of American military might, though General Carr was an accomplished Civil War and Indian fighter, and the 5th was a veteran of other Indian campaigns. Rather they show the bravery and willingness to defend the families of the renowned Dog Soldier.  He fought sometimes with hard to get rifles, and then only if he could get rare ammunition.  These brave Indians fought with mostly bows and arrows until the last arrow had flown.  And the families were saved that day, for Carr would allow no rampage by his Pawnee Scouts, longtime enemies of the Cheyenne.

From here we turned west again under darkening skies to find rest and peace in our new camp, Silver Spurs, along the placid South Platte River a mile north of Fort Morgan.  What we found was a RODEO!  Sort of.

Well, it WAS Saturday night.

OK. Not QUITE a full rodeo. But the pic to the right sort of tells it the way it was last evening.

You see, unbeknownst to us we had camped in a traveling workers community. Roustabouts. All pipeline and well drilling men with their wives and girlfriends living full time in their RV's. We didn't see any kids; just dogs.They travel the west wherever the jobs appear.  Many losing track of friends for years at a time only to meet up with them again on another job states away, or on Facebook.

And they had their trucks circled up in the camp road so all headlights pointed at the straw bale calf cowering in the center of all that attention. 'Cause some of these guys had been actual rodeo pros in younger years and they were teaching others how to rope.


And guess what... they tried to teach us!

And darned if I didn't rope that sucker with my first toss!  And my last.  Never tempt fate, I sometimes say.

THEN we finally went to sleep by the light of the silvery moon.

All in all, a pretty wonderful 45th anniversary, we both agreed. Though we did miss being with our friends back in PA a bit.

-Ken