Saturday, September 29, 2007
Riverside City Park, Laurel, MT - Aug 21-24
Riverside Park has both electric & non-electric sites, but all the electric sites were taken by temporary workers at the local gas plant, so we relied on Mr Sun for a few days. Actually the electric sites are less attractive & squeezed in fairly tightly, so we were not sorry to be in the non-electric area. The weather cooperated, and it was pleasantly cool, so we didn't miss the a/c at all. An interesting historical footnote: Riverside Park was the site of a German prisoner-of-war camp in WWII, and the buildings in the park were built by the prisoners.
Laurel is quite close to Billings, MT, and there is a lot to see and do in the area. We started by visiting Pompeys Pillar NM. The centerpiece is a large sandstone outcrop rising up 150 feet on the banks of the Yellowstone River, where ethnographic & archeological evidence indicates that this was a place of ritual & religious activity. 
There are hundreds of prehistoric petroglyphs on its sides, which would be fairly unremarkable except on July 25, 1806, William Clark of the Lewis & Clark Expedition recorded his stop on their return trip from the Pacific Ocean. Clark was fascinated by the massive stone and named it Pompy's Tower after Sacagawea's son whom he called Pomp. Clark described a "remarkable rock" set in an idyllic landscape of grassy plains, snow-capped mountains, and cliffs abutting the meandering river. He marked his presence by engraving his name and the date on the outcrop. This simple inscription, still visible, is the only remaining on-site physical evidence of Lewis & Clark's epic journey.
We next visited Pictograph Cave State Park, which humans occupied at least 4500 years ago, leaving behind 30,000 artifacts and over 100 pictographs (paintings). Unfortunately, most of the images have faded and are barely or not at all visible. An excellent trail brochure & signs showed how the images originally looked. The self-guided Billings Historic Site Tour/Scenic Drive and a couple of sessions with the local duplicate bridge club completed our stay.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 1:21 PM 
