All roads lead to ... Pompey's Pillar National Monument?

What an amazing coincidence happened today!  I was at the Pompey's Pillar National Monument, where William Clark carved in the rock his name and the date when he passed by there on the Lewis & Clark expedition.  This is one of the only bits of extant physical evidence of the Lewis & Clark expedition.

In the visitor's center, while I was chatting with someone I had just met in the parking lot there who happens to own the Harbor View Cafe in Pepin, Wisconsin (which I passed by on this trip but had not stopped to eat at the restaurant), who should walk up and grab me by the shoulder but Paul the canoeist from the campsite in Minnesota that was so overrun with mosquitoes that he and his friends invited me to tag along to eat at the Olive Garden rather than being stuck trying to eat at the campsite with the mosquitoes (as described in this blog post from June 24).

Almost one month and about 1,000 miles of pedaling later, we randomly chanced to meet again!  Here's a picture of me with Paul and his family in the Pompey's Pillar visitors' center:

Pompey's Pillar itself was also pretty neat.  There were great views from the top!

 View of Pompey's Pillar as you approach it

 View from the top of Pompey's Pillar

Another view from the top of Pompey's Pillar

I've been following the Lewis & Clark Trail for a while now, and, while I've never been particularly interested in that expedition before, the exhibition at the visitors' center at Pompey's Pillar may have tipped the scales and sparked my interest to make me want to learn more than just the tidbits from a visitors' center exhibit.  I downloaded a copy of The Journals of Lewis and Clark and will give it a try.  It certainly fits the "travel" theme of my reading list, and I've just finished a couple of the books I was reading so am ready for a new one anyway.

Tomorrow I meet my brother in Billings and will take a week off from bicycling while we tour Yellowstone etc. by car.  I suppose I'll keep up with the blog, though.