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.

The Yellowstone River

After a relatively short ride today mainly on ridges overlooking the Yellowstone River valley, my campsite is right near the river.

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Longest mileage of the trip

Nothing particularly remarkable about today except that I rode 85 miles which will probably be the longest for a single day on the whole trip. Thank goodness the wind was mostly at my back and it was good weather if slightly hot.

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Back from the edge of the world

I got more adventure than I bargained for on my detour to see Fort Peck Dam. The marina/campground that I was staying at turned out to be down a seven mile road that included sections of deep, loose gravel; sections of sticky mud they call "gumbo"; and sections of sand. Thank goodness my guardian angel for the weekend Ralyn happened to drive by in her truck and told me to throw my bicycle in the back of her pick-up and she'd give me a ride.



The campground was lovely, however, and worth the difficult access.



The next day, Ralyn gave me a ride up to and tour of the dam itself and the interpretive center, which included a small natural history museum as well. This is the area in which many big dinosaur skeletons have been found.



After that rest day off the bike, I had a tough ride today directly into the strongest and most relentless wind yet. I could see storms passing by me on the right and on the left but I made it without getting rained on at all.

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I am alive....

FYI I'm fine and at Rock Creek Marina near Fort Peck tonight and tomorrow night. There is spotty voice service here and no data (I'm using employee's hot spot now which won't be reliably available) so I may be more or less out of touch and unreachable for the next 48 hours or so. I'm definitely in the outback now!

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The people post

I've been meeting more and more interesting people every day it seems, so here's a post about today as an example of the types of people I encounter pretty much every day.

I already mentioned in my last post the lovely warmshowers.org hosts of yesterday evening, so of course I had a final opportunity to chat with Joy before setting off.

I backtracked a couple of miles to go to the grocery store. On the way to the grocery store I ran into Max and Stephanie from Germany whom I had met a couple of weeks ago way back in eastern North Dakota and we seemed to keep ending up in the same campgrounds. They were on their way today to Circle, MT, which was also my destination, so we arranged to rendezvous there.

I had coffee near the grocery store and a really nice talk about life in general with the coffee shop owner Tonja.



Still in the grocery store parking lot loading up the bike, I talked to another local who bicycled a lot who gave me good tips on my route etc.

About 10 miles down the road this guy Kenny pulls over and asks if I'm on my way to Circle (pretty much the only place I could be en route to on the particular road I was on). Kenny says I should come pitch my tent in his yard and that I should ask the group of cyclists I will meet coming my direction who camped there the night before and they will tell me how nice it is to camp at Kenny's. And sure enough I do see them and ask and they do confirm it was a good place to stay.

When I arrive in Circle, Max and Stephanie have already started setting up camp in the park so I decide to stay there with them rather than go to Kenny's.




Bonus, there is a swimming pool in the park so I got in a swim which was nice on a sunny 90 degree day.

On the way into town, I met four more long-distance bicyclists, two of whom are staying at Kenny's and two of whom are at the local motel tonight. We talked a while mainly about routes.

Once I got to town, I had beer and a chili and cornbread mall at the Round Towne bar. It was delicious, and the bartender had just been yesterday at the exact spot that I will be tomorrow so she was able to give me good information.

While I was in town, or rather in the pool I guess it was, a crazy man came to the campsite and ranted at Max and Stephanie about his taxes LOL (but we are keeping our bear sprays handy in case he comes back later!).

Today was an exceptionally social day and I usually don't meet quite that many people, but since I've usually been writing about the scenery or the weather or whatever, I wanted to give a flavor of the social life of a vagabond in at least one post.

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Updated itinerary page; now in Montana

The itinerary page had been updated to include my revised route to Billings, adding a detour to Fort Peck since I had some extra time. There is also another new map at the bottom of the itinerary page which shows where I'm going after Billings until central Wyoming at least, which is as far as my detailed plans go.

The past couple of days I've ridden some miles on the interstate, which is what is done out here because sometimes there is literally no other road that goes where you want to go. As scary as it sounds, it really feels reasonably safesafer than plenty of roads over ridden on in Chicago!wide shoulders and not too much traffic. It's just a really nice 4-lane divided highway.

Last night I stayed in a sketchy-looking campground, but the owner was really nice and there was a nice shower and even laundry there. It turned out to be a comfortable place. Tonight I'm staying indoors with a very nice couple who are warmshowers.org hosts. They're also hosting another guy who's going west to east so it was good to get some intel on what lies in store for me next.

The weather has been perfect and the landscape is about the same as the past few days, so, really enjoyable but nothing particularly new to show in photographs.

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