2/13 – 2/17/23
When planning this trip, I had decided that I would make two YouTube videos from the footage: one documenting the Fortieth Parallel Survey through Nevada, the other following Lewis and Clark over the Rocky Mountains. The “Lewis and Clark” leg of the trip began at Missoula…
2-13
I lurched through a ferociously productive morning at my motel, recording and editing a new advertisement for a YouTube video, before charging out into the flurries to follow Lewis and Clark. I began at Travelers’ Rest, just outside Missoula. Though blanketed by icy snow and raked by a raw wind during my visit, this was an idyllic place in September 1805, when the Corps of Discovery stopped here after crossing the Bitterroot Mountains.
I continued along the base of those mountains, falling snow shrouding their peaks, and followed the Bitterroot River up to the crest of Lost Trail Pass, where I plunged waist-deep in snow while trying to capture a panorama of the surrounding peaks.
On the Idaho side of the pass, I followed the frozen Salmon River – the “River of No Return” – through a spectacular mountain valley.
Beyond the foot of Lemhi pass – where Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide – and just above the windswept little town of Leadore, I pulled onto the snowy shoulder to wonder at the panorama, stretching thirty miles up and down mountains kindled by the setting sun.
I crossed back over the Bitterroots – and back into Montana – on an icy gravel road riddled with wheel-swallowing potholes. Although part of the road followed the Corps of Discovery’s route over the mountains, I was too worried about being caught by an impending snowstorm to take much footage.
As I finally merged onto the highway, just after nearly pulverizing four mule deer, a light snow began to fall. About 25 miles from my hotel, the friendly flurry became a blinding blizzard that swiftly covered the road. Unable to see more than ten yards ahead, I slowed to a crawl, flipped on my hazards, and crunched my way into Butte. The city itself was a snow globe, huge flakes swarming around the street lights like so many moths.
2-14
It was still snowing when I woke. The highway, slicked with ice, was buffeted by a crosswind strong enough to send snow sheeting and sagebrush bouncing over the pavement. As might be imagined, this did not enhance my enjoyment of the drive. Yet I managed to make my way to the headwaters of the Missouri River, where three mountain streams join to form America’s longest river.
By the time I rumbled over the unplowed parking lot, the snow had stopped. The wind, however, was still howling, whipping up snow devils along the frozen shore. After a few bankside shots, I hiked up a rocky hill overlooking the confluence. Snow whipped past my boots as I took my videos, hands freezing.
The next hour saw the most treacherous driving of the entire trip. The asphalt was coated in black ice, which was itself skinned over with blowing snow. A semi just ahead of me slid into a ditch. A few minutes later, I watched another semi jackknife on the westbound lanes, blocking the entire road. Leaving the highway, I followed a local road swept by clouds of pulverized snow.
Finally, I reached Helena, where I strolled through the surprisingly compact state capital. Then onward, over a treacherous mountain pass, to Great Falls, where I spent a pleasant hour at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. I wasn’t the only visitor, but it was close.
A few miles north, I followed a road that seemed to run forever through snowy wheat fields down to the Ryan Dam, built on top of the cataract that gave Great Falls its name. The badlands around Fort Benton were even more picturesque, the setting sun picking out every detail.
I stopped one last time in the dead little town of Loma, where a row of abandoned grain elevators loomed against the twilight.
2-15
The Siesta Motel in Havre is a time capsule. Everything in my room – sheets, lights, and lime-green refrigerator – had been there since 1965. This morning, while waiting for a video to upload to YouTube (the wi-fi signal was also outmoded), I took a short walk in the tear-inducingly cold wind.
Then eastward on US-2, the Hi-line, forever over the plains. Every half-hour or so, a languishing little town would stray into view. Otherwise, low lines of snowy bluffs provided the only relief from the treeless landscape.
At Fort Peck Dam, I stopped beside a memorial to the workers who died during construction, some still entombed in the dam. Then I drove up to an overlook of the reservoir. In the distance, a fisherman drove his pickup over the ice.
Another long drive over the snowy plains brought me among the tanks, jacks, and trucks of the Bakken oil field. Just past the North Dakota state line, I detoured south to the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, where I walked out onto the pale blue ice.
My last stop of the day was the ghost town of Charbonneau, North Dakota. The setting sun painted the cracked plaster of the school. Waist-high snowdrifts circled a collapsing house. A pair of grain elevators faded into the twilight.
2-16
I left my hotel in Watford City about an hour before dawn, a crescent moon mirrored on the frozen snow. Turning into Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I followed the icy park road to a frigid overlook of the badlands of the Little Missouri. On my way back to the highway, I passed a small herd of buffalo bedded down in the snow.
In central North Dakota, I stopped at the Knife River Indian villages where – as so often on this trip – I was the only visitor. After watching an orientation video on the Hidatsa tribe, I ventured onto into the sparkling snow to see a reconstructed earth lodge, which was warmer than I would have expected.
At nearby Fort Mandan – a reconstruction of the camp where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-5 – I pulled on my boots and staggered through the drifts for a few pictures. Although the fort itself was closed, the nearby interpretive center (where I was again the only visitor) was open, and I spent a pleasant half-hour inside.
Then, all YouTube business completed, I began the long, long drive east along I-94. In a rehearsal of my eastward trek on I-80, I was treated to a seemingly changeless snowy landscape. As on that first drive, the weather was sunny but cold, the temperature hovering around 10 degrees.
There’s little more to say. I had dinner with some of my college friends in St. Paul, slept on their couch, and continued on my way the following morning, ending – after a few hours at the Eau Claire Library – in Lake Geneva, where I spent the weekend with my family.