7/5 - Great Falls, Montana

So much for the campground not allowing fireworks last night.  Wouldn’t have made any difference if they had.  The area all around us was full of them. Lots of beautiful high-in-the-sky fireworks but the downside was all the noise which went on until 1:00 a.m.  The term “not happy campers” comes to mind.  However, having taken a chance on choosing a city campground on the 4^th of July we weren’t really surprised.  I had been hoping for better but c’est la vie.  One good thing about last night was that it didn’t seem to bother Lovie or the cats which was a big relief.

This afternoon we went to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center on the Missouri River.  It’s a National Park Service facility which is very well done.  We enjoyed the video and the park ranger’s talk before going through the museum.  (I should say I enjoyed the ranger’s talk because I don’t think Jim got much of it.  The ranger spoke much too softly and was very hard to understand.)

Right inside the front door I finally found a buffalo I could hug!

We’ve been to other Lewis & Clark museums, and will get to more on this trip, but the very interesting focus at this one is on Great Falls and what happened when they got here.  They had been told of “the falls” by Indians but not that there were actually five falls and how big they were.  They had tons of much-needed supplies with them which were being carried by various types of watercraft.  Two of the boats were pirogues which were too big to portage around the falls so had to be left here.  One can only imagine their dismay when they discovered five large falls which would require portaging for 18 miles to reach water where they could again use their boats.  They thought from their contact with the Indians that they’d be here for four days.  It turned into 34 days of grueling labor. 

A display in the museum showing how they portaged their boats up the steep terrain.  The boats were 3000 pound dugout canoes which had to be dried out for days to reduce their weight.  They were then piled with supplies which made them even heavier.  The expedition had no horses at this point so the men had to pull everything themselves.  They built wheeled conveyances out of cottonwood which was the only tree available.  Cottonwood is very soft so the wheels and axles kept breaking.  The men were so exhausted they would fall asleep instantly when they hit the ground.  There were occasions when they were hit by hailstorms with golfball-sized hail.  Some of the men who couldn’t get under the boats were knocked to the ground, leaving them battered and bleeding.  And after dragging one boat 18 miles, they had to return 18 miles to get another one.  What a horrible ordeal.

Most people have heard of the young Indian woman Sacagawea who traveled with Lewis and Clark as an interpreter.  She was a Shoshone who was captured by the Hidatsa tribe when she was probably around 10 years old (give or take a few).  Her name, which means bird woman, was given to her by the Hidatsa.  It is usually mispronounced, so the museum has a display which gets it straight.  It’s Sah-KAH-ga-we-a with a hard “g,” not a “j” sound.  The pronunciation problem started with Nicholas Biddle’s 1814 edition of the journals in which, having never even met her, he changed Lewis’s spelling of her name from Sah-ca-gah-wea to Sacajawea.  Here we are 200 years later still confused.

After the interpretive center we went a little further down the river to the Giant Springs State Park.  This is one of the world’s biggest fresh water springs with an output of over 150 million gallons per day.  The water comes from the Little Belt Mountains southeast of Great Falls.  It takes 50 years for the water to get from the mountains to the springs where pressure from overlying rock forces it to come up through cracks in the limestone formation.

The springs flow into the Missouri on both sides of the little island on the right.  The water flowing to the left of the island is called the Roe River which is only 201 feet long at its longest constant point.  It had the title of world’s shortest river with the D River in Oregon being next at 440 feet.  The Oregonians decided to fight for first place so remeasured when the tide was at its highest point which made their river 120 feet long.  The battle ended when Guinness World Records just stopped listing the shortest river in 2006.  No one cares if there isn’t a record to be had.

Beautifully clear spring water flowing into the Missouri.

All but one of the Missouri’s five falls have hydroelectric dams.  (Great Falls calls itself Electric City.)  We were able to see just two of the five, one of which has hardly any water running over it.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get to the one actually named Great Falls but, considering the small amount of water going over Rainbow Falls, we probably didn’t miss much.

Rainbow Falls has a dam and large hydroelectric plant which, after being redeveloped in 2013, can supply enough power for 54,000 homes.  All but a little water is being directed to the single turbine which generates 60 megawatts of electricity.  The hydro plant is out of sight to the right with a 2300’ canal leading to it from the water behind the dam.  There’s so little water going over the falls right now you can hardly see it. 

Black Eagle Falls and its dam and hydro plant. 

Tomorrow we’re off to Glacier National Park.  We’re staying in West Glacier which is on the west side of the park.  I expected it to be much higher than Great Falls but it’s the same elevation.   However, we’re wondering what’s between here and there!