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...Continued
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"Clark was a much more experienced river man than Lewis was," Huser explains between strokes. "He'd traveled up and down the Mississippi and the Ohio."
We are paddling downstream on the Missouri River, on a trip run by River Odysseys West, for which Huser--pioneering Western river guide and author--serves as a Lewis and Clark historian and naturalist.
If you want one experience that will make you feel what traveling with Lewis and Clark might have been like, canoeing Montana's Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River is probably it. Lewis and Clark's journey was substantially a river journey. And while elsewhere the Missouri has been dammed and reservoired into submission, here it flows beautifully beneath sandstone bluffs, not so different from the river that the Corps traveled in two pirogues and six dugout canoes.
Remember, Huser notes, the Corps were traveling upstream. With the right wind, they could raise sails. Otherwise they would paddle. If the current grew too strong, they would pole the boats upriver or, worse, tow them by hand, struggling against muddy river bottoms and rattlesnake-infested banks.
"Imagine towing these boats through swift, cold water--they were here in May, the river was running fast with snowmelt," Huser says. "It was tough. They worked their bones off."
We don't. The dozen of us on this trip are in that idyllic position of being vicariously thrilled by hardships we don't have to endure. We paddle easily downstream along a midsummer Missouri made for jumping into when the day gets hot, with plenty of time allowed for water fights and hikes and dinners around the campfire.
Still. What does come through is the newness of the land, its immensity. No European American had been here before Lewis and Clark arrived. We hike to Hole in the Wall--a chiseled gap in the sandstone cliffs--and view the Missouri curling lazy as a lizard below us. We note what Lewis noted: "The hills and river Clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic apperance.... As we passed on it seemed as if those seens of visionary inchantment would never have and end."
Romantic. Enchantment. As usual, the poetic yet precise Lewis gets things right--in this case, the effect this landscape has on you.
At the start of our voyage, we had paused to see where Marias River flows into the Missouri; Lewis named it for a cousin he may have been sweet on. Now, near trip's end, we pass the Judith River, which Clark named for the woman he would marry in 1808. The link between geography and passion seems appropriate. After five days on the river, we understand how the West can hit you with the force of new love--the kind of love that makes you run away and change your life and become someone entirely new.
The mountains
The journey changes. On July 25, 1805, the Corps determine they have reached the Missouri's headwaters, near what is now Three Forks, Montana. They follow one fork, the newly named Jefferson, southwest. But without the Missouri to guide them, they lose certainty. A confusing maze of mountains rises to the west.
There is another change. As the Corps cross the Montana plains, they encounter none of the native peoples who live there. The Assiniboins and Blackfeet surely know of the strangers' presence. But they choose not to reveal themselves.
Now the stories of the mountains and the peoples who live in them intertwine. The Corps' 15-year-old interpreter, Sacagawea--the most widely used spelling, although some prefer "Sacajawea" instead--begins to recognize landmarks. Here is home: the country from which she was kidnapped five years earlier. On August 17, Lewis, who had been traveling ahead of the main party, escorts a group of Lemhi Shoshone back to the site the Corps have dubbed Camp Fortunate.
The account of this meeting still brings a lump to the throat. Sacagawea, Clark recorded, "danced for the joyful Sight, and She made signs to me that they were her nation." She had found her people. One of them, Chief Cameahwait, was her brother. ("A man of Influence, Sence, & easey & reserved manners," praised Clark, as if the chief were a marriageable hero out of Jane Austen.) Cameahwait sold the expedition needed horses, lent them a guide, whom the captains called Old Toby, and offered invaluable advice about proceeding west.
So, let Sacagawea and her people be your guides through their part of the world. Start near Three Forks in Missouri Headwaters State Park, still remarkably unspoiled, then take Interstate 90 and State 41 south to the college town of Dillon, Montana, where you can admire the old-fashioned diorama of the Corps at the town's visitor center. Drive south on Interstate 15 to the site of Camp Fortunate, now submerged beneath Clark Canyon Reservoir.
Part of the fun of following Lewis and Clark is the chance to drive backroads. Here's a superlative one: Head east on State 324, south on Forest Road 3909, then drive up Lemhi Pass Road through deceptively gentle hills to 7,373-foot-high Lemhi Pass. (The dirt-and-gravel road is generally open June to October--check before you set out--and is suitable for passenger cars.) At the crest of the Continental Divide, you'll see one of the West's most breathtaking views: to the west, ridge upon ridge of mountains; to the east, the full sweep of prairie Montana. Then you follow steep, curvy Agency Creek Road down into Idaho's Lemhi River Valley.
Last year, Salmon, Idaho, opened the Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural, and Education Center. Exhibits and an interpretive trail tell the story of the heroine and her tribe. "Sacagawea is mythical, almost," says center director Gary Van Huffel. "But the Lemhi Shoshone feel her strength comes from her Shoshone upbringing."
From Salmon, take . 93 north over Lost Trail Pass, then drop down into Montana's Bitterroot Valley. At Travelers' Rest State Park, archaeologists have discovered interesting if ignoble traces of the expedition: mercury deposits in the camp latrine, remnants of the Corps cure-all, Dr. Benjamin Rush's Thunderclappers.
Now west again, up . 12 to Lolo Pass. Here is another case where the gap between the Corps' experience and ours widens into a chasm. Struggling over the Bitterroots in September of 1805, Lewis and Clark endured fierce hunger and brutal weather: "I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life," wrote Clark.
Today the drive is pure beauty. The highway climbs mountainsides veiled by mist, solemn with cedars, with silver streams--Lolo Creek, Lochsa River--shining below. An adolescent black bear tumbles across the road ahead, clowning, oblivious, before vanishing into forest.
In a few hours, you reach Weippe Prairie. Perhaps it is a mistake to oversell this site, one beloved by Lewis and Clark enthusiasts. There is not that much to do here. The town of Weippe has opened an interpretive center that features murals of the expedition; out on the prairie proper, you can see a large sign that explains what took place here.
And yet Weippe Prairie is one of the most evocatively beautiful places anywhere along the trail: a high rolling plain, seemingly suspended between earth and cloud. Here, on September 20, a nearly starving Clark staggered out of the mountains to encounter members of the Nez Perce tribe. According to oral tradition, one was an elderly woman named Watkuweis, who advised her suspicious fellow tribe members not to kill the newcomers but to treat them well.
In this way, Lewis and Clark's travels through the harsh mountains are bookended on the west and east by striking examples of Native American generosity. In Lapwai, Idaho, tribe member Ethel Greene is in charge of the Nez Perce's participation in the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. It has not been easy, Greene says, to share a story that holds such a strongly mixed message. After all, many of the strangers who came after Lewis and Clark were noticeably less benign.
Lewis and Clark's bicentennial, Greene says, "is not a celebration to us. It is an observance. Remember, if we had not allowed them to come in, if we had killed them, well, that would have changed everything."
To the sea
Never underestimate the power of a good ending. If you consider Lewis and Clark's journey our American epic, an Odyssey decked out in leather breeches, then their final sprint to the Pacific provides a suitably grand finale.
"Took our leave ... and proceeded on down the great Columbia river," Clark wrote on October 18, 1805. Great it was, and is. Like the Missouri, the Columbia has been altered from the river that the Corps traveled. The vast waterfalls, like Celilo, have been drowned by dams, and the wild waters ("agitated gut Swelling, boiling & whorling in every direction," Clark complained) calmed into pools amenable to windsurfing. But the sight of the still-powerful river flowing beneath stately basalt cliffs is a spectacle of almost classical grandeur.
At Pillar Rock, near what is now Altoona, Washington, they glimpsed what they had come for. "Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to see," wrote Clark. Historians now dispute whether Clark could have seen the ocean from this site. But give the Corps their moment of joy. They would need it.
For as they neared their goal, the elements fought to stop them. The weather was sodden; they could not find level ground to camp. Finally, they reached the Washington coast, lingered there a few days, then opted to make their winter camp on the other side of the river, in Oregon.
These shores are now among the most visitor-friendly places to learn about Lewis and Clark. At Cape Disappointment State Park, in Ilwaco, Washington, the newly expanded Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center lets you retrace the Corps' route downriver, and it introduces you to the sophisticated Chinook tribe the party encountered.
"Remember," says interpretive specialist Ryan Karlson, "the Chinook had been dealing with fur traders for some years. Lewis and Clark didn't expect to find natives wearing top hats, speaking a little English. But they did."
Across the river, Fort Clatsop National Memorial re-creates the fort that the Corps built for their winter stay in 1805-06. Here Dick Basch, a Clatsop who is working with the bicentennial planners, has a wry appreciation for the Corps' dealings with his people.
"They were clumsy traders," Basch says. "These guys showed up with a few beads, a few fishhooks, their clothes rotting off them. We felt sorry for them. Look at their fort--how the roof slopes in to the courtyard so all the rain pours down on them. I am sure the Clatsop said, 'What the hell are they thinking?'"
The Corps stayed at Fort Clatsop for 106 days, of which it rained every day but 12. Yet the inclement weather was in some ways a blessing. It forced Lewis and Clark to stay inside, to work on their journals, to tally the miles they had traveled, the number of new species discovered--178 plants and 122 animals, by present count--and to gauge the magnitude of their achievement.
After you inspect Fort Clatsop, you'll want to go down and gaze at the Corps' final goal. "The Great Western Ocian," Clark called it, adding, "I cant Say Pasific as Since I have Seen it, it has been the reverse."
But then the sea's mighty pounding--"repeeted roling thunder," said Clark--still provides a suitable drumroll for what was achieved. The waves shake this Oregon beach as if recognizing, 200 years later, that here a new American nation, spanning an entire continent, was born.
RELATED ARTICLE: Following Lewis and Clark
The West's portion of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail stretches 2,000 miles. To follow it completely requires two weeks. For a shorter trip, consider basing your vacation on one of the three trail segments listed here.
When to go? The Montana to Idaho trail portions are best May to October; the Oregon to Washington segments are fine April to October.
Washington and Oregon: 5 days. See the Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon-Washington coast. Best bases: Hood River, Portland, and Astoria, Oregon.
2 Western Montana and Idaho: 5-6 days. Travel Lemhi and Lolo Passes, and see the new Sacajawea center, Weippe Prairie, and Nez Perce National Historical Park. Best bases: Dillon and Missoula, Montana; Salmon, Idaho.
3 Central Montana: 5-8 days. Visit Great Falls' Lewis and Clark center and explore the Upper Missouri River and its headwaters, with a possible side trip to Pompeys Pillar. Best bases: Great Falls, Fort Benton, and Three Forks.
The Pacific
Cape Disappointment State Park (360/642-3029) has an expanded interpretive center. Fort Clatsop National Memorial (503/861-2471) offers a replica of the Corps' fort, plus living-history programs. The Lewis & Clark Explorer Train (Fri-Mon, May 28-Sep 30; 800/872-7245) runs from Portland to Astoria.
Columbia River
Sacajawea State Park (509/545-2361) displays expedition exhibits. In the Columbia Gorge, hike up 845-foot Beacon Rock. Or join 2-hour cruises on the stern-wheeler Columbia Gorge ($20; 800/643-1354) or the American West Steamboat Company's 7- to 11-night cruises (from $1,493; 800/434-1232).
Weippe Prairie
The Weippe Discovery Center (208/435-4058) has murals of the expedition; the Nez Perce meeting site lies 1 1/2 miles south. In Orofino, Idaho, paddle with Clearwater River Co. (from $45; 208/276-3199). In Spalding, Idaho, Nez Perce National Historical Park (208/843-2261) tells the tribe's story.
Lolo Pass
In Lolo, Montana, Travelers' Rest State Park (406/273-4253) preserves a Corps campground. From there, follow . 12 toward Lolo Pass, where the Lolo Pass Visitor Center (208/942-3113) offers trail exhibits. Or explore on horse-back with Triple O Outfitters (.com or 208/464-2349).
Lemhi Pass
In Dillon, Montana, get directions from the Beaverhead--Deerlodge National Forest (420 Barrett St.; 406/683-3900) to 7,373-foot-high Lemhi Pass National Historic Landmark. On the west side of the pass, Salmon, Idaho's new Sacajawea center (60 State 28; 208/756-1188) tells the story of the expedition's heroine.
Missouri Headwaters
Missouri Headwaters State Park (406/994-4042) is serenely evocative; nearby Three Forks (406/285-4753) has the historic Sacajawea Hotel, the Headwaters Heritage Museum (406/285-4778), and the Three Forks Area Festival of Discovery (Jul 23-24; contact museum).
Great Falls
The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center (406/727-8733) offers the West's best overview of the expedition. The annual Lewis & Clark Festival (Jun 23-27; 406/452-5661) features reenactments, float trips, hikes, and other fun.
Upper Missouri River
Guided canoe trips run $200-$325 a day for three to five days. Outfitters include River Odysseys West (800/451-6034) and Missouri River Canoe Company (800/426-2926). For a full list, contact the Bureau of Land Management in Fort Benton, Montana (406/622-3839).
Pompeys Pillar
This sandstone rise, which William Clark named for Sacagawea's son, Pomp, holds one of the few physical remnants of the expedition: Clark's signature, visible behind protective glass. At exit 23 of I-94, 23 miles east of Billings; (406) 896-5235.
Natural wonders
Over the course of their journey, Lewis and Clark discovered 178 plant species and 122 animal species previously unknown to science. The West's portion of the trail supplied more than its share of newly seen species, a few of which still carry the explorers' names. Here are some of the most noteworthy.
RELATED ARTICLE: Hit the trail
Our listings follow the Lewis and Clark trail from east to west. Visit .com/trail for more lodging, camping, and dining options.
Missouri River
MALTA, MT
Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. Campsites include Kipp Recreation Area (34 developed sites with water and rest rooms $6; Apr-Nov). ./ldo/ or (406) 538-7461.
VIRGELLE, MT
Virgelle Merc. Rooms in a historic store; headquarters for the Missouri River Canoe Co. 6 cabins from $40 per person, 4 rooms from $ Virgelle Ferry Rd. N.; or (800) 426-2926.
FORT BENTON, MT
Grand Union Hotel. This 1882 inn may be the best place to stay along the trail. The Union Grille ($$$; dinner only Wed-Sun) offers sophisticated food. 26 rooms from $79. 1 Grand Union Square; or (406) 622-1882.
THREE FORKS, MT
Sacajawea Hotel. This former railroad inn is charming; good restaurant too ($$$). 31 rooms from $89. 5 N. Main St.; or (888) 722-2529.
The mountains
DILLON, MT
Horse Prairie Ranch. Cattle ranch with guest accommodations, smack on trail. From $1,270 per person for four nights; open Jun-Sep; .com or (888) 726-2454.
LOLO HOT SPRINGS, MT
Lolo Hot Springs RV Park and Campground. 40 tent sites (May-Oct) from $15, 70 RV sites (May-Oct) from $24, 4 cabins (year-round) from $75. 38500 W. . 12; .com or (877) 541-5117.
SALMON, ID
Greyhouse Inn Bed and Breakfast. 7 rooms from $65. 1115 . 93 S.; .com or (800) 348-8097.
WEIPPE, ID
Retreat at Someday Ranch. Bed-and-breakfast run by Lewis and Clark buffs. 3 tepees from $35, 1 cabin from $60; Apr-Nov. 2021 Musselshell Rd.; (208) 435-4362.
To the sea
NEAR GOLDENDALE, WA
Maryhill State Park. 20 tent sites from $16, 50 RV sites from $22. Off . 97 and State 14; . or (509) 773-5007.
HOOD RIVER, OR
Columbia Gorge Hotel. Cliffside 1920s inn. 40 rooms from $179. 4000 Westcliff Dr.; .com or (800) 345-1921.
Hood River Hotel. Restored 1913 hotel. 41 rooms and suites from $69. 102 Oak St.; .com or (800) 386-1859.
Memaloose State Park. 66 tent sites from $12, 44 RV sites from $16; Mar-Oct. Along I-84, 11 miles west of The Dalles; or (800) 551-6949.
NORTH BONNEVILLE, WA
Beacon Rock State Park. 29 campsites at trail landmark. From $16. Milepost 35 on State 14; . or (509) 427-8265.
WHITE SALMON, WA
Inn of the White Salmon. A pretty 16-room inn. From $106. 172 W. Jewett Blvd.; .com or (800) 972-5226.
STEVENSON, WA
Dolce Skamania Lodge. This 1993 lodge has an 18-hole golf course and trails through 175 wooded acres. 254 rooms from $129. 1131 . Skamania Lodge Way; . or (800) 221-7117.
PORTLAND
The Governor Hotel. The glorious Lewis and Clark mural in the lobby makes this historic downtown hotel a good choice for trail travelers. 100 rooms from $185. 611 . 10th Ave.; .com or (503) 224-3400.
SEAVIEW, WA
The Shelburne Inn. This hotel has 13 rooms and 2 suites as well as the Shoalwater Restaurant ($$$), which offers cozy lunches and microbrews. From $119. 4415 Pacific Way; .com or (800) 466-1896.
ASTORIA, OR
Hotel Elliott. Plush, newly renovated 1924 hotel in Astoria's historic downtown; most upper-floor rooms have river views. 32 rooms from $105. 357 12th St.; or (877) 378-1924.
WARRENTON, OR
Fort Stevens State Park. On the coast near Fort Clatsop and Astoria. 19 tent sites from $13, 477 RV sites from $17, 15 yurts from $29. 100 Peter Iredale Rd.; .org or (800) 551-6949.
. AND ABIGAIL PETERSON
RELATED ARTICLE: Best reading
Adventuring along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Sierra Club Books, 2003; $17), Elizabeth Grossman. This guide directs you to the trail's best outdoor experiences.
The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (University of Nebraska Press, 2003; $30), edited by Gary Moulton. Required reading; single-volume abridgement of Moulton's 13-volume edition of the journals.
On the River with Lewis and Clark (Texas A & M University Press, spring 2004; $18), Verne Huser. A river lover's guide to the expedition.
Traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail (The Globe Pequot Press, 2003; $16), Julie Fanselow. This guide by Sunset contributor Fanselow mixes history with comprehensive travel advice.
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (Simon & Schuster, 1997; $17), Stephen E. Ambrose. The late historian's book started the bicentennial boom.
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