Vacation Journal
Friday, September 08, 2006
Clark and Roosevelt and Lewis
If you keep encountering these three names, you must be traveling in Montana and North Dakota, which we are.
From the entry to our campground in Gardiner, Montana, you can see the Roosevelt Arch, the official northern entry into Yellowstone, which was dedicated by President Roosevelt in April 1903. One interesting fact, he dedicated it before it was built. He then went camping in Yellowstone in the area where Roosevelt Lodge is now located.
We left Gardiner on Wednesday morning, heading north to Livingstone. On the way we got a good look at a Mountain Goat on a hill near the highway. We also saw a Coyote run across the highway. We followed the Yellowstone River as we left Gardiner and essentially followed it all the way to the North Dakota border. Livingstone is the place where William Clark reached the river overland on his return to St. Louis. He followed the Yellowstone all the way into North Dakota where it meets the Missouri. That's where he rejoined Lewis. So, 90% of our return route so far has been retracing the steps of parts of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. We spent one night in Miles City, Montana where the Tongue River meets the Yellowstone River.
About 25 miles into North Dakota, we stopped to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Teddy had two ranches in this area. He lived for about three years in North Dakota. It is my opinion that Teddy and the National Park have a couple things in common, they are both somewhat rough and they are both dead. I guess you could say I didn't particularly care much for the park.
We crossed into the Central Time Zone late in the afternoon on Thursday, so we lost an hour. We spent a full day in the Bismarck area. We ran out of time and didn't get to do all the things we wanted to do. We visited the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, north of Bismarck. This included a reconstructed Fort Mandan where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804. Our guide at Fort Mandan was a full-blood Teton Sioux. He was a good talker.
Then we visited the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site about 15 miles away. It was interesting to learn about the Native American tribes in this area who were agriculture-based. They were not nomadic tribes. We visited the site of the village where Sakakawea lived. We got to visit a reconstruction of a Mandan earthlodge, their type of home where 10 to 20 people lived in a one room house.
We visited Fort Abraham Lincoln south of Mandan. Mandan is the town on the other side of the Missouri River from Bismarck. Originally the area had been another Mandan village. Then it had been a U.S. Army base with Infantry. Later, Cavalry was added. George Custer was the commander of the cavalry. It was from here that Custer left on his way to the Little Big Horn. The post had been abandoned in the 1890's. The local pioneers took down all the buildings to use the lumber in their homes. Later the CCC marked where the original buildings had been and rebuilt a few of them. Then after WWII, the state rebuilt even more. We were inside the Commissary building which looked to me to be almost identical in construction to several buildings at old Fort Sill. Since Custer had been at Fort Sill sometime before he was sent to Fort Abraham Lincoln, it seems that both posts were built about the same time. We took a tour of the reconstructed Custer house and the reconstructed Mandan Village. The guides at both places were informative and we enjoyed both tours.
There is a lot to see around here. If we ever get to this area again, we will spend a few days and see more.
When I left the RV on Friday morning, I immediately went back into the RV and got the heaviest jacket I had. It was cold! The high on Friday did not reach 70. The weather man tonight was talking about the possibility of a frost soon. I guess we are leaving just in time.
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