Exploring the American Landscape
This November 7, 1805 journal entry from William Clark perfectly encapsulates his peculiar spelling and punctuation style, along with the very understandable relief of getting to the long-awaited destination: the Pacific Ocean. At the mouth of the Columbia River, just west of the town of Astoria, Oregon, the Lewis & Clark Expedition completed the journey … Read more
We first selected the Lewis & Clark Historic Trail as our general guideline for our 2018 travels with nothing more than a vague recollection of these figures from our American history classes decades ago. A quick glance at the trail map showed a route through plenty of states that were completely new to us, like … Read more
After our busy week in Missoula, it was time to recover from all the excitement and also to work off some of the beer. We relocated a very short distance southwest into the Bitterroot National Forest, to a lovely campground situated alongside a burbling creek. This was a welcome change from the road noise and … Read more
After leaving North Dakota we faced a verrrrrry long trip across the gigantic state of Montana, the 4th largest in the nation, to reach our next major destination: Glacier National Park. Eastern Montana and the northern tier of Montana are very sparsely populated (as in: plan ahead, because the next gas station could be 50+ … Read more
There are so many incredible accomplishments and “firsts” of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Over 28 months, the group traveled through 8,000 miles of unknown territory by water and by land. Captain Lewis recorded detailed descriptions in his journals of at least 120 mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, as well as at least 182 plant … Read more