Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Onawa, IA - Left St. Joseph @ 9:00am, and got into IA at 10:15; drove to Nebraska City, NE to visit Missouri River Basin L&C Interpretive/Visitors center.  An excellent museum and good history video with an outside keel boat replica. Inside the museum, there were complete scale models of the keel boat and both red and white pirogues.  From there we drove to Council Bluffs, IA to see the Council Bluffs Monument and Scenic Overlook where L&C had their first "council" with the Otoe and Missouri Indians. Afterwards, we  drove to Onewa, IA to the On-Ur-Wa RV Park campsite (17 miles south of Sioux City, IA). Tomorrow, we plan to Plan to head up to Sioux City to see Sergeant Floyd's monument, up to Sioux Falls, then off to Chamberlain, ND where we plan to camp.  

WEATHER: Wow, there couldn't be more of a change from Monday to Tuesday! St. Joseph this morning was 81 degrees @ 9:00am and very windy, again (14+mph). When we arrived at Onawa, IA, @ 3:15pm, it was 64 degrees and still very windy (17+mph) and rainy on and off. Weather reports say 48 degrees tonight.

At dinnertime, we headed across the Missouri River into Nebraska to the Green Lantern restaurant in Decatur, NE. Before that we stopped at the Lewis and Clark State Park, in Owana, IA, a beautiful campground with a full-sized replica of their keel boat, which was filmed for the National Geographic IMAX movie. I hope to have some great pictures of the keel boat from today's visit on tomorrow's post.

COMMENT: We need to tell you that we say, "we're following the Lewis and Clark Trail" but we really aren't fully able or willing to do that.  We could follow their water route, since it was 95% on water, but with dams and the changing river structure and flow, this is difficult. The L&C trail is 3,700 miles long, administered by the US National Park Service (NPS) and as much as possible, it follows along their actual route.  But really following the trail by car/trailer would take more time than we can allow since most of the route follows Missouri River trails and back roads, very challenging even for our small 21 foot travel trailer. We cannot possibly stop at all the markers and stops along the way (e.g. we drove by the confluence of the Missouri and Platte Rivers where L&C camped). A  NPS guide we met at the top of the St. Louis, MO Arch, from Summit, NJ, said,"it's just like Washington slept here in NJ.  L&C Markers are everywhere." 

Most of our stops are mentioned in Steven Ambrose writings, the excellent NPS website and the 4 books we used to research the trip. A final note on St. Joseph, MO:  as I mentioned below, we would have enjoyed seeing Karl Bodmer's 1830 paintings of what Lewis and Clark saw shortly after they traveled up the Missouri to Bismark, ND (Ft. Mandan), but we couldn't.  St. Joseph is also known for: Jesse James was killed here in April 1882; Walter Cronkite was born here and the Pony Express began here in 1860-1870 (existed only 18 months, from MO to Sacramento, CA in 10 days by pony/horse).     

CORRECTION: In yesterday's post, I mistakenly said that (George Caleb Bingham) was the artist painting L&C scenes.  It was actually Karl Bodmer who after speaking to William Clark, traveled up the Missouri as far north as Ft. Mandan in 1830 with Prince Maximilian of Germany. They turned back and headed south due to the threat of Blackfeet Indian attacks. Ironically, many of Karl Bodmer's paintings are on display in St. Joseph, MO, where we camped yesterday. Hmmm.