GEORGE CATHCART'S LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNAL  The record of a motor trip in the footsteps of the Corps of Discovery Week 1

INTRODUCTION: In the summer of 1996 I undertook to drive from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Oregon Coast, following as closely as possible the route taken by Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery nearly 200 years earlier. I had finished the first draft of a novel, "The Memoirs of Hugh Hall," about one of the less-known soldiers who participated in that grand exploration of the newly acquired and largely unknown Louisiana Territory. Although I had visited the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and some of the Montana portion of the route, I had never seen most of the country through which the expedition passed as it made its way up and down the Missouri River: Missouri and Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, the Dakotas and the badlands of eastern Montana. My plan was to stay as close to the river as possible, stop and observe frequently and spend my evenings editing my manuscript. I wanted to experience the hardships as much as I could, so I left my air conditioner off, did not wear sunglasses or mosquito repellent (after the first few days), and camped out every night. In the last week of June I left Arizona with my two children, Chas and Anna, and made a four-day drive to my aunt's farm in Michigan. My wife met me there after a convention in Nashville, Tenn. We spent a week together there, and then she took the children to my mother's house in South Carolina. On July 6, 1996, I drove from Ithaca, Mich., to St. Louis to begin my trip. My journal begins that night at Wood River, Illinois, where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1803-04...

7-6-96 7 p.m. Wood River, Ill. Impressions: Beer-drinking fishermen wait by poles for fish to take bites... Couples kiss... The tug Lewis and Clark pushes a string of barges N on the Mississippi. The site is surrounded by dark deciduous swampy woods. They will be grey, cold and wet in winter. Across from me, the Missouri mouth is dense woods on the south bank, a sparsely wooded island or spit on north bank. The Mississippi current overpowers the little Wood River, but is not as formidable as feared. The expedition would have rowed away from the east bank of the Mississippi (in the keelboat, a replica of which is pictured here), crossed the current at 45 degrees, probably, headed straight for the middle of the mouth of the Missouri. A big dark log bobs its way down the Mississippi. Driftwood lines the shore on the east side of the Mississippi. A rotunda with a pillar for each state through which the expedition passed serves as the historical marker, with a big vertical rock in the middle. The open side of the rotunda faces the mouth of the Missouri. One of three young men pulls a 30" catfish from the mouth of the Wood, admires it for a while and puts it on a stringer. A pretty blonde woman who has been with her boyfriend and another couple on the bank finishes her beer and tosses the can on the ground before getting in her car and leaving.

7/8 8:45 a.m. Marshall, MO, at a café. Three farmers linger over coffee and talk softly. They seem remarkably calm about the morning's welcome rain. Farming is like baseball. You don't celebrate every hit. A long drought is right around the corner. Yesterday I felt a lot like Hugh Hall, trying to escape the lower river. I had a long but fruitful visit to the museum at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial at St. Louis, and a lengthy stay in St. Charles. I didn't get going up the river until about 1:30. Then I felt like I was racing the clock. I passed up a few nice bucolic farm scenes I should have photographed. But I did stop by the river whenever I had a chance. The backroads that bear the Lewis and Clark Trail symbol wind narrowly along ridge-tops and through fields of tasseled corn. They follow the land, so they wind almost at random, unlike the Interstate, which ignores the land and plows ahead. Manifest Destiny. I like Interstates when I have a destination, but they bore me, and I often have to fight off 70-mile an hour naps. On this journey, the destination is whatever I see next. Roads that follow the land show me the land. I saw the Boon's Lick salt works and made it to Arrow Rock. Set up tent, cooked dinner, showered before full dark. Due to clear sky I left the fly off the tent. When I got up to pee about 1:30, many stars were gone, apparently under clouds. An hour later I was putting the fly on the tent in a light shower. By dawn it was raining steadily, with occasional thunder. Stove wouldn't light -- too wet -- so I packed wet and drove on up MO 41 to get gas (out of unleaded regular, out of ice) at Countryside Convenience. Now I'm here for breakfast.

7/10 Snake Creek State Park, S.D. 9:40 p.m. It's still light, but not enough to write by without the lantern. No mosquitoes tonight. Too much wind. No noise either. All neighbors, what neighbors there are, seem quiet. The highway is near here. From where I sit I can see the huge impoundment that was once the Missouri River, and the bridge across it. Traffic is light, but even better, it is barely audible. Maybe because the wind is from the south, and the bridge is north of me. The radio said thunderstorms are expected all over SD after midnight, but the sky looks pretty clear right now. This time I'll be ready for it! It's been a pretty good day. I visited a scenic overlook in KS south of the real Blackbird Hill, which is off-limits, declared so by the Omaha (Mahar) Indians. Then I went to Sgt. Floyd's gravesite on the bluff in Sioux City. Magnificent. A tall stone obelisk stands over the grave, with a memorial to Floyd on one side and to all veterans on the other. I-29 runs noisily at the bottom of the bluff now, stabilizing the banks of the river that nearly tore away Floyd's grave. It was very moving for me. I said a prayer and saluted before I left. From there I picked my route across SD, first to Vermillion, where I bought a thermos and got directions to Spirit Mound. There the tenant gave me permission to climb, and I cut my way through tall prairie grass to the top (see notes). I had a nice chat w/ her when I came down. It was a beautiful day. Clark described the view from there as nearly treeless, with big herds of buffalo roaming over the prairie. Now it is probably more woody, no buffalo, and thousands of acres of corn and soy beans instead of prairie grass. All the vistas today have been vast. The trees are all but gone. Right here I am on the 100th meridian. From here on it will get more and more barren, I'm sure. Before I left Vermillion I went in a Target-like store there (Pima-something?) and got a new mattress and a new water bottle. Both of those items (the ones I started with) leak too much. I have managed to sleep somehow, but want a little more comfort, thanks. At Fort Randall Dam I went in the visitors center and got in a conversation with an old man there named Arthur Witchman of Wagner, SD. He has a daughter in Tucson. We started chatting about some old chairs from the fort that are on display. We decided they both look very uncomfortable, unlike the Adirondack chair he was sitting in and its companion. He built those chairs, and 14 more like them, he told me proudly. The wood was a handsome oak. He said the wood on one chair had lain out in weather 14 years. It looked excellent. Earlier I had stopped at Gavin Pt. Dam and watched people fish in the roiling tailwaters there, including one man with a bow, who caught a handsome carp. He said the flood gates are rarely opened, but have been for several months now to lower Lewis & Clark Lake while a new bridge is built at Niobrara. The floodgates have produced a bonanza for anglers. The bow-fisherman said he likes to smoke his carp. I am deeply in this journey now. It is easier to talk to people, and to tell them what I am doing. I feel exactly like the writer I have always known I am. I am alive. This afternoon on a Yankton radio station I heard that famous Yankton native Tom Brokaw has donated $25,000 for Indian education programs. Community news. You gotta love it. Still no mosquitoes here, but I am surrounded by caddis flies and a strange orange beetle. I'm going to go test that new mattress.

7-11 Indian Memorial Recreation Area. Lake Oahe, SD, near Mobridge. So named for Sitting Bull's Grave and a Sacagawea Monument nearby. I woke up about 6 o'clock this morning and was startled by a leaden sky outside my tent door. In a flash I decided to take down the tent first thing. I did not want a wet tent again. The wind had blown almost all night, so the tent was bone dry. I dropped it, folded it and packed it swiftly. No rain yet... Then I did my morning devotionals, sitting at the picnic table, before fixing my usual gourmet bacon & egg breakfast. Still no rain. Life is good. An old man walked by and asked if I'd seen the wild turkey go by a few minutes before. I'd missed it. Breakfast done, all packed, still no rain. I decided to edit some more. I wrote a lot about the Teton Sioux confrontation, and I needed more time with it than the usual evening session. I'm trying to more or less keep up with the action in the country I'm going through. Tonight, I'm camped near the Arikara Village, and I will work on the Ricara encounter before going to bed. When the first drops of rain fell, I put the novel away and got ready to go, pausing to get a few rain pictures first. Then I went west, across the river, and turned north on the other side. I stopped often to take photos in the rain. The "plains" there are neither plane nor plain. Rolling, rugged country, very green, trees growing more and more sparse. I drove N and had to get on I-90 to get to the river at Chamberlain, where I took a long, unplanned break at the Akta Lakota Museum. I got some good views of Lakota clothing and tools, which I'll incorporate. Did a little shopping in the store there, too. Skies began to clear as I left Chamberlain and went N to Fort Thompson, where I crossed the river again on Big Bend Dam, got some good photos and nearly got stuck on the shoulder when my rear wheels dug in after I took some photos of an old chapel by the road. I had to put it in 4-wheel drive to dig out. No traffic, fortunately. For most of the way from Chamberlain to Ft. Pierre I was on reservation land, so sad and poor. On the west side, the Lower Brule reservation, I encountered terrible roads, broken, muddy, rutted. The Explorer now looks like it's been exploring. At Ft. Pierre, I visited the mouth of the Bad River, where the first Teton Sioux encounter occurred. I sought out Dayton Duncan's famous D&E Café in Pierre, where I had the lunch special for $3.59. I tipped the waitress a dollar. I remarked that I had read that prices had risen at the D&E since Duncan went through 10 years ago, but it didn't seem like it to me. "They haven't gone up much," the waitress said. Then it was back on the road, N on 1804. I stopped at the Center Monument that claims it's the center of SD and "approximately the center of North America." Very approximate. That spot is east of Minot, ND, a few hundred miles north of here. I followed 1804 to here as much as I could, including a long dirt stretch West of Onida where some construction crews were working. Twice I got stopped by flagwomen who leaned in and said, "There are crews working ahead of you on the left. Stay right and drive slow." "Thanks," I replied, smiling. I raced a shower, I took pictures, I gasped at the yellow treelessness of the Northern Plains, which really are plane in places, but still not plain. Closer to the river, the country is very broken and rugged and lovely. (There is a cloud of mosquitoes dancing in the wind about two feet over my head. I don't know why they are staying up there, but I am grateful.) I got here about 5:30, but it was really 4:30 since the time zone changed when I crossed the river from Mobridge. The wind was howling, but my tent site is behind some shrubbery that makes an adequate wind break. I can hear one loud family nearby, but it's still early. I don't think they'll go on long. Most people here are anglers. Most people at these state parks look like refugees from "The Grapes of Wrath," but their rigs are a tad more comfortable than Tom Joad ever rode in. I edited for a while, then ate. A big black cloud came over so I put things away and went to shower early, but it blew away. There are lots of clouds still, but none look threatening. I anticipate a peaceful night.

7/13 Lewis & Clark State Park, 16 miles east of Williston, ND, my northernmost campsite on this journey. It has been 2 days since I last wrote in here, but I have not covered a lot of miles. Yesterday I went back to Mobridge to see the Klein Museum, then did laundry and wrote postcards and got some groceries before proceeding on after 11:30 a.m. I went up the west side of into ND, which was not marked. I didn't know I was in ND until I reached ND 24 and the sign to Sitting Bull's other grave. I had visited one S.B. gravesite earlier in the day near Mobridge. That one also had an obelisk to Sacagawea. I said prayers there. The grave in ND was robbed and the bones moved to the site in SD, but ND says they got the wrong bones. The lady at the Klein Museum says she thinks they're both wrong; he's buried out on the prairie somewhere. I stopped briefly at Ft. Rice, which has little L&C significance, and then drove on through rain to Fort Abraham Lincoln, which has some excellent Mandan earth lodge reconstructions. I talked for a while with Butch Thunderhawk, a Lakota craftsman making tools in the trading post there. I didn't stop in Bismarck to see the museum there. I went to Double Ditch Indian Village with some good views of the Missouri and islands, then scooted up to the Fort Mandan reconstruction, where I camped in a primitive site (no showers) and took a lot of photos. The reconstruction is some distance downstream from the actual site, which has probably been swept away by the river. But it was fun to camp there. I had it all to myself and slept well. The reconstruction is also in a heavily wooded area (mostly green ash), which is historically inaccurate, of course. The fort was sited to have clear views in all directions for defensive purposes. Today I stopped briefly at Ft. Clark, then for a longer time at Knife River Indian Village, where I took the 1.7 mile walk down to the village on the Knife River and took beaucoup notes. It was 11:30 when I left there, only 30 miles from my Friday night camp. I took pictures at Garrison Dam, then went around the east end of Lake Sakakawea and stopped at the Arikara Celebration Pow Wow at White Shield. I was in time for the Grand Entry and took lots of pictures. I was disappointed in the quality and quantity of Indian crafts there. I stayed about an hour and a half, then drove on to the 3 Tribes Museum next to Four Bears Casino, across the river from New Town. Nice museum, but the road from New Town was all torn up, being widened by and for casino revenues. There was only one other customer in the museum. When he left, the woman gave him a book about the affiliated tribes. He had never heard of them before today. He went to try to get his wife away from the slots to go to White Shield for the Pow Wow. I relayed to him what they told me: Buffalo meat at the feast at 5 p.m. I stayed and chatted with the woman for a while, then drove the 60 empty miles to here, listening to Prairie Home Companion for a while. I'm camped literally on the shore of Lake Sakakawea. I hear waves crashing below the bluff. There are dark clouds where the sun is setting, but clear above. An east wind is keeping the mosquitoes away and making it cold. I saw a coyote as I drove from the front gate to the campsite. The lake is surrounded by badlands and is very beautiful. Camp isn't full, even though it's Saturday night. Lots of fishermen, as usual. There was a jet skier riding around in circles below me for a while. Now that was annoying. Tomorrow into Montana. Tonight, now, shower. It's been 2 days. I'm ripe.