I had just picked up some supplies and was nearly back to Sam when something caught my eye in the next parking lot row.  It was an RV with the Minnesota vanity license plate “Travel”!  Naturally, I felt compelled to meet the person with such good taste in license plates.

Travel! Explore!

I went up to the RV and knocked on the door.  The owners greeted me, and I returned the favor.  We were making pleasant small talk when an even more remarkable coincidence came to bear: Pat and Dianne were from the northeast corner of Plymouth, Minnesota.  That’s about three miles from where I grew up!  It’s quite probable that we have mutual acquaintances.

I think this guy likes to kayak (Another neat license plate, seen in Whitehorse, YT)

It’s incredible to think about the number of pieces that had to fall into place to precipitate that encounter.  At a minimum, it took me making a wrong turn trying to find a Starbucks, finding a Walmart instead, deciding that I needed more Febreze for my hockey gear, and parking in a particular section of the lot.  Not to mention everything leading up to my being in Fairbanks in the first place, which for other reasons ended up happening several days earlier than planned (mostly having to do with, of all things, the existence of direct flights to Whitehorse from Frankfurt and Zurich).

Amazing.  A butterfly flaps its wings, indeed.