crossing the nearly 200-year-old trail of the Corps of Discovery. My family takes a lot of weekend trips, and, almost by default, we've become aficionados of that indefatigable team of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We've even started keeping our trusty paperback version of THE JOURNALS OF LEWIS AND CLARK in the car to refer to whenever we encounter a monument or historic site.
My seven-year-old daughter, Josie, doesn't yet have a real deep grasp of history--she is still confused about who this "Mary" Lewis is. She recently asked my husband, Tom, "Was that Sacagawea's name after she married Captain Lewis, Dad?" But she is starting to understand that a long time ago (1804-1806, to be exact), something fascinating happened in this part of the country. Since then, the 33-man, one-woman and one-baby expedition, which was ordered by President Thomas Jefferson in an attempt to discover an inland waterway route to the Pacific Ocean, has attained legendary status. The scope and success of their journey are, in some historians' eyes, even more amazing than humanity's trip to the moon.
As it happens, more than one fourth of the 8,000 miles covered by the expedition was traveled through territory that later became known as Montana (the trail then continues on through Idaho and into our home state of Washington). So when we learned about a new Lewis and Clark interpretive center in Great Falls, Montana, we knew we had to go.
Great Falls, at the center of the state and with a population of 58,000, is one of the largest cities in Montana. It lies on the popular route between Yellowstone National Park (about 200 miles to the south) and Glacier National Park (about 150 miles to the northwest) and is a relatively short 150-mile side trip for families traveling cross-country on Interstate 90. In addition to letting us visit the new interpretive center and retrace a portion of the expedition's route, the trip also gave us the opportunity to savor a setting we can never get enough of: Montana in midsummer. Read on for our two-day itinerary.
Please keep in mind that phone numbers, addresses, and prices are subject to change. Updated August 2005.
