Billings

We drove around the Billings area and checked out the sites. While we didn’t find anything that knocked our socks off, we did enjoy our visit. We thought it a bit funny that the roadway maintenance folk in Billings couldn’t seem to make up their minds, however.

While we had driven by here on the I-90 many times, we had never managed to stop. Established by Slick in 2001, Pompey’s Pillar National Monument is only about a half hour East of Billings, and is well worth the visit.

Long before white Europeans invaded this land, the Crow considered this stone pillar on the banks of the Yellowstone River as sacred. As Merriweather Lewis and William Clark made their way back to St. Louis after their Corps of Discovery expedition, they spit up at Three Forks with Lewis heading along a Northern path, with Clark following the Yellowstone River.

When Clark got to the stone pillar that dominated the horizon, he pitched camp along the Yellowstone bluffs. He had become quite taken by Sacagawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and referred to him as Pomp or Little Pompy. When it came time to place a name on the site in his journals, he named it after the son of Sacagawea.

One of the fascinating things about the site is that Clark carved his name into the pillar on July 25, 1806 – 211 years ago – and it is still there for you to see! While there is much documented about the track of the Corps of Discovery through the extensive journals of both men, this is the only location along the entire Lewis and Clark Trail that you can be certain you are standing in the footsteps of the explorers themselves – he had to have been in this spot to inscribe his name.

As we drove back into Billings we could barely see the downtown, and we could actually see the smoke drifting through town. It’s sad that most of the hiking trails and scenic roads we were on a month ago are now closed, and visitors evacuated. Even one historic lodge we had seen is now destroyed. Very sad.

I learned I maybe wasn’t as talented as I thought. I thought I had threaded the needle across the Beartooth Scenic Byway where vehicles over 40 feet (we’re a good 50 combined) are not recommended. But I heard the Woman scream as I brushed the right rear-view mirror against a 12-foot-tall whip marker for snow plows in the winter. I thought it was just the mirror. While there was no damage on the passenger side of Colectiva, I did manage to somehow shear off the running light and its plastic shield!

Talk to you soon!