Where Custer Fell

Yesterday we drove out to the Little Bighorn National Monument and saw exactly where General Custer's Last Stand was in the battle against the Souix, Lakota & other local Indians. The park rangers give historical talks about the battle throughout the day and are a wealth of knowledge about the battle and the complex history that lead up to the Indians fighting for their way of life. Both sides had justifiable reasons to fight, unfortunately the cultural differences were too great for peaceful coexistence.

Battle of Little Big Horn

Talk about timing! We were able to make it to the annual reenactment of Custer's Last Stand, done only over one weekend per year. It was a real treat to see. There were over 100 living historians reenacting the battle of little big horn 130 years ago. The battle was a lot more than men playing indians and cowboys, it was a full history lesson in a nutshell about the American expansion to the west.

Rocky Mountain High

Hey, here's my office view from today. The rocky mountains at 13,500 feet.

Billings Montana

We are now in Billings Montana. It's the largest city in Montana and has lot's to see and do. The Montana Brewing Company located downtown on Broadway has an excellent Yellowfin Tuna sandwich.

International Peace Garden

The Peace Garden State is North Dakota, and this is the International Peace Garden airport. The garden itself is the pathway that seems to connect to the end of the runway. This pathway is the US/Canadian border. The garden was founded in the 1930's as a symbol of peace along the longest unguarded border in the world.

Professional Video Game Player

The Office

With three GPS systems on board I shouldn't ever get lost. The big color screen is my primary navigation system for aerial survey. It is a touch screen that controls a windows based laptop with Track-Air software loaded onto it. The little color display to the right is a Garmin 296 which is a handheld GPS that has terrain & airspace information to help me maintain situational awareness. The third GPS is a panel mounted IFR GPS that I can use while I'm in the clouds.

Playing Video Games for Work

This is Eric's masterpiece. Eric is the electronics guy who does all of our custom installs at Keystone. He "slightly" modified a Playstation 2 video game controller in order to control the camera in the back of our plane. From what I hear, the inside of the controller is packed full of electronic wonders to make it work with our camera. He also mounted a digital video camera onto our gyro-stabilized mount to help Krystle track the drift of the airplane. The video display is just below the PS2 Controller.

Mt. Rushmore

Hey we made it to Mount Rushmore! Bad weather in North Dakota meant we had a chance to do a road trip into South Dakota to check out some of the other local sights. We stayed the night with our friend 2nd Lt Tim Trautman and had a good visit with him and his two kittys.

Bismarck, ND

Following Lewis and Clark's Trail

Fort Mandan. Where Lewis & Clark spent their winter in both directions of their journey.

Footprints in North Dakota

Fort Lincoln