Michele Smith: On the Road

On August 25 the National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday.

To mark the occasion, my traveling partner and I set out from Dayton on June 25 for an eight-day whirlwind tour of some of the Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota National Parks, national historic memorials, and other places of interest for a westerner to see.

The first leg of our journey took us 622 miles across the aptly-named "Big Sky Country" of Montana, where there is plenty of "elbow room," to the historic site of the Battle of Little Big Horn, near the Wyoming border.

At that site on June 25, 1876, five companies o...