Shabbos on BLM land in Montana was restful and pleasant.  We went for a couple walks and enjoyed the views.

This morning we woke up to cloudy skies after quite a bit of rain overnight:

The ground here must be mostly composed of clay, because it was extremely slick.  We hitched up and managed to get the truck and RV turned around before the upwards slope had our wheels spinning uselessly.

We used our leveling blocks to construct a runway for each tire:

After a couple iterations, we managed to get out onto the road:

Tough leveling blocks:

We continued south and west.  A motorist motioned to us to pull over and we found that a tire had failed.  For some reason, the TPMS system didn’t sound an alarm.

This is the first time we’ve had a tire fail on this RV:

We installed the spare:

The view from where we changed the tire:

It pays to carry a full set of tools:

Our next stop was Pompeys Pillar National Monument, a rock outcropping along the Yellowstone River.  It was here that William Clark of the Corps of Discovery carved his name into the rock face, leaving behind the only physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806.  Clark named the formation after Sacagawea’s son, who was nicknamed “Pomp”.

Pompey’s Pillar:

The visitor center showed how much detail was filled in by Clark in maps of the American West thanks to the expedition:

Before the expedition, the western interior of the continent was almost completely unknown, save for the presence of the Rocky Mountains, thought then to be a single ridge of low hills:

Reality was quite a bit more brutal for the expedition, as the post-expedition map shows:

The visitor center has a replica of Clark’s signature:

We climbed up the side of Pompey’s Pillar:

Clark’s original signature, protected under glass:

We continued south and west to Billings where we took our tire to Sam’s Club for replacement:

We continued south, crossing from Montana into Wyoming to overnight at a truck stop near Lovell, Wyoming.

See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.