A friend and I decided that a three-week road trip following the explorers\u2019 route up the Missouri River across the newly acquired Louisiana Territory from St. Louis to the river\u2019s headwaters in western Montana would be the best way to begin our Lewis and Clark adventure.<\/p>\n
The national and state parks, museums, and interpretive centers along the way were all excellent and enabled us to appreciate the joys and hardships the Corps of Discovery experienced. I will be able to touch on only a few of them here. As we headed west from New Jersey, we dubbed ourselves the older adult versions of Thelma and Louise.<\/p>\n
The Museum of Westward Expansion<\/a> beneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri was the perfect spot to begin learning about the epic trip. Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery<\/a>, a Ken Burns film gave a wonderful overview of the complete trip to the Pacific Ocean. Exhibits taught us about the history of St. Louis and the city\u2019s role in the westward movement, the hearty pioneers of the past, the devastating impact of expansion on the Native American tribes, and the dreadful extension of slavery.<\/p>\n A room for the Captains at Camp River DuBois<\/p><\/div>\n Lewis spent much of the winter of 1803 and 1804 in St. Louis gathering supplies for the trip and attending celebrations for the recent purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Clark was nearby on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River training the men in military discipline at Camp River Dubois.<\/p>\n A wooden palisade surrounds the reconstructed fort at Lewis and Clark State Historic Site<\/a> near Hartford, Illinois. We were transported back in time to the winter of 1803 and 1804 as a reenactor described the daily routine of the men, including marching, standing watch, and refining their weaponry skills. He pointed out the bundles of supplies that Lewis meticulously packed and labeled for the journey that would be through unknown territory with extreme weather conditions.<\/p>\n A replica of Lewis’ keelboat at Lewis and Clark State Historic Site, Illinois<\/p><\/div>\n The nearby visitor center houses an impressive cross-section of a 55-foot keelboat similar to the one the corps rowed, poled, sailed, and often dragged up the Missouri River. We could see where the myriad of provisions, ranging from gunpowder, sewing supplies, dental, medical, and surveying equipment, paper, ink, and spirits to items for trade with the Native Americans, were all stowed away.<\/p>\n There was a cabin for the captains located at the back with bunk beds, a desk, and shelves for scientific instruments and books.<\/p>\n When the corps left Camp River DuBois in spring 1804, they had no idea that they would be gone almost two-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n Monument to Sergeant Floyd near Sioux City, Iowa<\/p><\/div>\n Near Sioux City, Iowa, we stopped to see the 100-foot obelisk monument to Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only casualty of the expedition. It is reminiscent of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n Historians believe that Floyd died from a ruptured appendix and that even the finest medical treatment of the day wouldn\u2019t have saved him.<\/p>\n As the corps labored up the Missouri River, the captains wrote about the difficulties of traveling upstream, such as river banks collapsing sending debris rushing down the river and the merciless assaults by mosquitoes. Yet the men worked together without complaining. Lewis mentioned that his dog, Seaman, howled in pain from the onslaught of mosquitoes.<\/p>\n Each interpretive center focused on a different aspect of the journey. The one in Sioux City had a noteworthy exhibit about Clark\u2019s Black slave, York, who was treated as an equal during the journey.<\/p>\n As the bitter winter of 1804 and 1805 approached, the corps looked for a suitable place to make their winter camp, near the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, with their domed-shaped earth lodges, in what is now North Dakota. Clark recorded temperatures of minus 40 degrees and cases of frostbite, which the captains treated.<\/p>\n We visited the recreated Fort Mandan where a costumed ranger enthusiastically explained how the fort was set up in a triangle with the usual rooms for the captains, their men, and supplies, plus an area for skilled workers such as the blacksmiths.<\/p>\n Sacagawea and Pomp on the grounds of the Capitol building, Bismark, North Dakota<\/p><\/div>\n It was here the captains hired Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian fur trapper, to be an interpreter for the rest of the journey. His wife, Sacagawea, also joined the corp. As a young teenager, she had been kidnapped from her Lemhi Shoshone tribe in what is now western Montana and brought east to the area of the Mandan villages.<\/p>\n Lewis believed that Sacagawea\u2019s Lemhi Shoshone background would be of help when the time came to trade for horses to cross the mountains. In February 1805, at the fort, Sacagawea gave birth to Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, affectionately nicknamed \u201cPomp\u201d by Clark. Pomp accompanied the corps to the Pacific and back, usually strapped to his mother\u2019s back.<\/p>\n One of the most challenging ordeals of the journey for the corps was the Great Falls of the Missouri River in western Montana. Lewis described the falls as \u201cthe grandest sight\u201d he \u201cever beheld.\u201d<\/p>\n It was 90-feet high with a rainbow. Lewis soon learned that it was the first of five falls, and his expected one-day portage around the falls turned into a two-week ordeal, plus recovery time.<\/p>\n Clark, Seaman & Lewis at Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Sioux City, Iowa<\/p><\/div>\n The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center<\/a> is devoted to the portage and includes an exhibit with a full-size canoe filled with supplies being dragged by the men on handmade wooden wheels up a cactus-riddled hill. There are now five dams to control the water flow. It\u2019s not nearly as picturesque.<\/p>\n Giant Springs in the foreground with Roe River running to the Missouri River<\/p><\/div>\n Within walking distance is a giant spring, which Clark described as \u201cthe largest fountain or spring\u201d he \u201cever saw.\u201d The water with its greenish hue bubbles up at a constant 54 degrees and serves as the headwaters of the 201-foot Roe River, which flows into the Missouri River. Looking down into the clear spring, we could see trout and green vegetation. The state park is next to a fish hatchery.<\/p>\n We soon came to the Missouri Headwaters State Park<\/a> near Three Forks, Montana, where the Madison, Jefferson, and Gallatin rivers converge to form the Missouri River. We could see the Tobacco Root Mountains far in the distance. A family was tubing in the river, and some men were fishing from the bank. It was a lovely, peaceful scene.<\/p>\n Our trip was about to end. The rest of the trail over the Bitterroot Mountains and down the Snake and Columbia rivers would have to wait until the next year. I\u2019ve decided this is the best way to learn history.<\/p>\n Oh, and we never did decide which one of us was Thelma and who was Louise.<\/p>\n Adventures Across America … Along the Lewis and Clark trail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2020","category-fall-2020-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10361"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10686,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10361\/revisions\/10686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_5143A-room-for-the-Captains-at-Camp-River-DuBois-750w.jpg\")
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As we passed through South Dakota and North Dakota, we were awed by the sight of massive fields of sunflowers stretching across the prairie as far as the eye could see. We also saw wind farms vanishing off into the distance.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_5435-Sacagawea-and-Pomp-on-the-grounds-of-the-Capitol-building-Bismark-North-Dakota.jpg\")
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Jennifer White Fischer is the author of Adventures Across America: On and Off the Trail of Lewis and Clark<\/em><\/a>, which is available at Barnes & Noble (barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). All photos courtesy of the author.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"