Crossing Lewis and Clark - Again

As we leave the next morning for Glacier International Peace Park, Granpa asks if I used the National Park website and made reservations for a campground.  Ooops.  Turns out that I wasn't the only one to goof.  Lil' Miss GPS took us to the east side of the Park, not the West side where we prefer to camp.




But Granpa took advantage of the route and took me by Great Falls, Montana to see the Lewis and Clark Museum.  Because of the series of waterfalls along this ten mile stretch of the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark had to portage for miles.  (That means take their boats out of the river and man-handle them across impossibly rough terrain.)  It took them 31 days to travel the ten miles.






It was grueling work because some of the pirouges carried several thousands pounds of supplies!  

Every ounce had to be transported by man-muscle.

First they portaged around Black Eagle Falls, and then Colter (six feet high), Rainbow (fifty feet high), and Crooked Falls (19 feet).

Clark reported seeing 10,000 buffalo concentrated along a two-mile stretch of the the river banks here.

It's amazing to think that, what took Lewis and Clark 31 days to get past, now only took us ten minutes in the comfort of an air-conditioned car.

Idaho Falls, Idaho

It's a two day drive up to the Canadian border, so I find us a halfway point to spend the night.  It's an off-brand hotel, Le Ritz Hotel and Suites, but it's lookin' pretty good to us.

We're on the banks of the Snake River,

and right on the Falls.

Pretty romantic, huh?

From our very nice room we can see across the Snake to the very first Mormon Temple built in Idaho.  They make those steeples high so as to draw your attention to the heavens above.

After the cavalry got control of the Shoshone Indians in 1863, pioneers and miners flooded west on the Montana Trail in search of the dreams - be those dreams of potato crops or gold mines.  The Montana Trail was one of the very few that ran north to south carrying folks over mountains and across streams and valleys from Salt Lake City, Utah, up through Idaho and into the Montana gold fields. 

This place used to be known as Taylor's Crossing.  Ol' Matt Taylor built a timber frame bridge across the Snake in 1865.  Crossing the black volcanic-rock gorge using Taylor's toll bridge here was a site better than having to go seven more miles up to the ferry.

By 1866 there had accumulated enough businesses at this crossing to be called a settlement and it became Eagle Rock.  The first child of European descent born at Eagle Rock was delivered in 1874.  By 1878 the railroad had built it's own bridge across the Snake.  In 1891 the town voted to change its name to Idaho Falls. Not bad growth over a thirty year span.  And here we are today.

Virgin River

Well, we're speaking again (of course!), and have decided to zip up to Glacier International Peace Park to do a bit of camping.  To get there we go through Las Vegas and head east through the Virgin River Canyon.  If you have to travel on an Interstate, you might as well go through a gorgeous canyon.

There's no place to pull over because of the construction, so I have to take pictures through the windshield.  It just doesn't do the scenery justice.

I've been after Granpa to get a polarizer filter for his camera, but it just seems it will never happen.  I decide to try using my sunglasses instead.  Makes a bit of difference, eh?

So, if you're ever visiting Vegas and just want to take a day drive, head east across some flat land for awhile and you'll come across this amazing piece of roadway.  It goes on for miles!

Indian Reservations

Well.  It seemed like a good idea.  Fourth of July, a drive through an Indian Reservation down to the Colorado River east of the Grand Canyon, just Granpa and I in his pickup truck down a dirt road.  I suppose it was ill-fated from the beginning.

Granpa's pickup is over 20 years old, has been totaled once, repaired, and crashed a couple more times.  But it's our farm truck, so it's okay.  (We brought it to Arizona so we'd be able to get the love seat we bought back to Texas.)  The truck's air-conditioner had been repaired in Texas, but it wasn't blowing cold - and we were in Arizona and it was the Fourth of July.  The dirt road was rough as an old corn cob, and we had to go about five miles an hour.  The a/c couldn't keep up, so it was a windows-down drive. 

The scenery was pretty.  

There was no one else on the road - well, except for a few burros that were keeping an eye on us. 

After all of this time in Arizona we were going to finally get down to the banks of the Colorado...  But, Granpa was hot, and just was stressing for I have no clue why. 

And then the worst happened.  The cops stopped us.  By "cops" I mean a Reservation cop.  He asked for our permit. 

"Permit?  We're just out for a holiday drive." 

"Sorry, permit please."

"Well, we don't have a permit."

"Then that will be $52.00."

WHAT!?!  What?!?  "We don't have that kind of cash on us."

"We will take a check."

Mm-mmmm-mm.  If Granpa wasn't happy before he absolutely isn't happy now.

After paying the $52.00 we went on to the river's edge - without speaking.  It would have been a wonderful place to spend the day.

 
But the day was completely spoiled.  So spoiled, in fact, that we didn't speak of it for weeks, and I couldn't bear to look at the pictures until today.

Maybe we'll try again this Fall, before we go back to Texas for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But not if it's gonna cost another $52.  Seems those Indians have become serious Capitalists!