Great Falls, Montana, Part I

Today, Peg and I and Patsy and Gary decided to play tourist. We first went to the Lewis & Clark Museum. The Museum is located along the Missouri River in a modern building designed so you can view the river from several places while inside. The journey that Lewis and Clark took was not for the faint of heart! When they got to this point in their sojourn, they were faced with a series of "great falls" they had to portage around (hence the name of the city). There was a depiction of how the men had to haul their boats and gear up the sides of the river to get around the falls. There was a longboat pulling rope in one area to show you how much strength it took to pull one of these boats all day long. It took a lot of strength to get up to a 2 hour "pull" on the meter! Peg and I would not have been the most helpful explorers!!!

After a couple of hours at the Lewis & Clark Museum, we had lunch and then headed for Giant Springs State Park. This was a really pretty place on the banks of the river where a spring pool bubbled up from the earth and flowed over a rock wall into the Missouri River. The water was 50 years old and at 54 degrees. The colors in the spring were a vivid green and could easily be seen through the clear water. 388.8 million gallons of water bubble up from this spring every 24 hours!

Next it was off to Rainbow Falls & Dam. The dam was part of the great falls in the early days of Lewis and Clark. It must have been a magnificent sight back then to see the natural falls created by this river.

In the evening we had dinner at a small restaurant called Bob's in the Little Bitt Mountains. We enjoyed the company of Denise and Scott, relatives of Gary and Patsy and Patsy's sister Maxine. This area is a popular ski center in the winter.