{"id":600,"date":"2016-08-18T23:40:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T23:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=600"},"modified":"2017-06-14T14:54:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T14:54:28","slug":"paying-our-respects-to-lewis-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/08\/18\/paying-our-respects-to-lewis-clark\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday, August 18 Paying Our Respects to Lewis & Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>We spent the whole day walking on the Divide, aiming for the famous (if you are into Lewis & Clark) Lemhi Pass, which their expedition correctly identified as the Continental Divide. Near the Pass is an equally famous spring which Lewis & Clark figured was the ultimate source of the Missouri River.\u00a0 They weren’t correct on that one, but who cares?<\/p>\n

We went to that very spring and drank a lot of its cold, great-tasting water, then loaded up with more, because we are facing 25 miles of no water. Groan. Our packs now weigh a ton, with 5 days of food and a lot of water, but it was fun to “hang out with Lewis & Clark” for awhile!<\/p>\n

DETAILS: <\/strong>There was a very bright, full moon early this morning, but we still needed to bump our “get up time” to 5:40.\u00a0 After we’d been hiking for awhile, we had a couple of “animal encounters”.\u00a0 First there was a herd of elk, and second, there was a young bear.\u00a0 Fixit spotted the elk herd; I spotted the bear (which was running away as fast as it could).<\/p>\n

We pretty much spent the whole day up high, walking on top of the Divide.\u00a0 This took us through several different kinds of forests, with different kinds of “ground covers.”\u00a0 One of the forests had many dead or dying trees, which normally would mean everything looking gray, but not here!\u00a0 The dead tree trunks and branches were covered with neon green lichen, which gave the whole forest a bright green look instead!\u00a0 When I was a kid, and we were camping in Yosemite, I remember playing with bits of that bright-colored lichen–I liked making little “log cabins” out of twigs, and then making “gardens” around them with the lichen. There were also some very pretty meadows and some very overgrazed pasture (complete with cows).<\/p>\n

We were anxious to get to Lemhi Pass, which is famous in the story of Lewis and Clark.\u00a0 They correctly figured out that it was the Continental Divide, and that meant (on their westbound trip) that they were now headed “downhill” to the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 We reached the Pass, and it was really great to know we were walking in the footsteps of history.\u00a0 There are roads here and there in the Pass area, and at the top, it was a little bit confusing with many different ways to go.\u00a0 Our goal at that point was the famous spring which Lewis and Clark thought was the ultimate, farthest source of the Missouri River.\u00a0 They were wrong on that one, but wow, it is a nice spring!\u00a0 The area around it is sort of like an oasis with a picnic area. The spring itself is fenced, but so much water is flowing out of it that we had no problem filling all our water containers for the 25 mile waterless stretch in front of us.\u00a0 And there are a couple of rocks placed so that you can stand and “straddle the Missouri”.<\/p>\n

First, though, we had to wait for a grandma and grandpa who got there ahead of us.\u00a0 They are on a road trip, and one of their “passengers” is a stuffed animal owned by their granddaughter.\u00a0 Every time they come to something noteworthy, they take a picture of the stuffed animal at that very spot, then send the pic to their granddaughter.\u00a0 So they were posing the animal by the spring and taking pictures of it!\u00a0 So cute!\u00a0 We didn’t mind the wait.\u00a0 Once it was our turn, we not only got our water to carry, but also drank a lot right then and there.\u00a0 Cold!\u00a0 Ahhhh!<\/p>\n

But we could not linger too long…gotta make miles.\u00a0 Groan, our packs were heavy when we put them on.\u00a0 Water WEIGHS!\u00a0 Looking at our maps, we saw that the trail out of Lemhi Pass was described as “faint and poorly marked.” Fortunately, it turned out that was an obsolete note–the trail was fine, with some occasional rocky stretches.\u00a0 And it was uphill, too–a big climb out of the Pass.<\/p>\n

Tonight we are camped in a forest.\u00a0 It was hard to find a spot–the ground is all so rocky.\u00a0 But I was pleased to discover that even with some slow-going steep climbs, plus hanging out at the spring, we still managed to do almost 25 miles.\u00a0 (24.6, to be exact)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 We spent the whole day walking on the Divide, aiming for the famous (if you are into Lewis & Clark) Lemhi Pass, which their expedition correctly identified as the Continental Divide. Near the Pass is an equally famous spring which Lewis & Clark figured was the ultimate source of the Missouri River.\u00a0 They weren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idaho","category-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1017,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}