Cody, WY to Great Falls, MT

 June 28, 2021

Chore day, cleaned the RV, bought groceries, read outside and then went to the Irma Hotel for their nightly gun fight show in the street.

The stage is the street outside the Irma Hotel.

The cast of characters from left to right;

Etta Place, Calamity Jane, Sundance Kid, Slim, and Wyatt Earp

And here is the gun fight.

It was a free show, and sometimes you have to let art flow.

June 29, 2021

Today we drove to Livingston, MT 

We drove the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway 

"Wyoming Highway 296 also known as the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway is a 45.96-mile-long state highway in the U.S. state of Wyoming and follows the route taken by Chief Joseph as he led the Nez Perce Indians out of Yellowstone National Park and into Montana in 1877 during their attempt to flee the U.S. Cavalry and escape into Canada."

After setting up the RV we picnicked at Sacagawea Park in Livingston, MT

excellent view of the Yellowstone River and the mountains beyond.

June 30, 2021

Today we drove on beautiful I-15 in Montana 

The Missouri River meandered alongside us all the way to Great Falls

where we left the RV at our overnight spot and headed for Giant Spring State Park.

"You are observing Black Eagle Dam, one of five hydroelectric power facilities in the Great Falls area, The first dam constructed atop Black Eagle Falls was a timber-and-rock-crib dam, built in 1890. It was the first hydroelectric dam built in Montana, and the first on the Missouri River."

Giant Spring 

"Geologists have determined that water seeps into the ground southeast of Great Falls in the Little Belt Mountains, where the Madison Limestone formation is exposed at the land surface. The water then travels through the formation toward Giant Springs.  In the springs area, the Madison Formation is about 400 feet below the surface. Pressure caused by the overlying rock layers forces the water from the Madison to escape upward, through the cracks in the overlying sandstone.  It takes less than 50 years for water to flow from the Little Belt Mountains to the Giant Springs area. The water emerges from the ground at a consistent 54 degrees, all year long" 

"Over 150 million gallons of water flow from Giant Springs everyday and cascade into the Missouri River."

"William Clark's description is still true over 200 years later.

"...the largest fountain or Spring I have ever saw, and doubt if it is not the largest in America known, this water boils up from under the rocks near the edge of the river and falls imediately  into the river 8 feets and keeps its colour for a mile which is emencely clear and of a bluish cast..."

How clear?  These plants are under the water of the spring. Amazingly clear.

Near the Giant Spring the state of Montana has a fish hatchery.

Here are some trout, the orange was is an albino rainbow trout.

We drove down the road to see Rainbow Falls, here is the right side.

Rainbow Falls on the left.  Before the dam was put in the falls covered the entire area.

"I now thought that if a skillfull painter had been asked to make a beautifull cascade that he would most probably have p[r]esented the precise immage of this one; nor could I for some time determine on which of those two great cataracts to bestoe the palm, on this or that which I had discovered yesterday; [the Great Falls] at length I determined between these two great rivals for glory that this was pleasingly beautifull, while the other was sublimely grand."

Captain Meriwether Lewis June 14, 1805

This is Crooked Falls, the third dam and falls on the Missouri River.

"During June and July 1805, the Corps of Discovery traveled around the five falls of the Missouri.

Unable to travel by water, the expedition had to bring the canoes out of the river and pull them up Portage Creek (now named Belt Creek).  They began the chore by finding cottonwood trees to make wheels (or trucks), upon which the canoes were pulled over the eighteen mile portage route that Captain Clark had mapped.  In twelve days the men made four trips back and forth across the windy, cactus-filled prairie. They took the canoes to a location known today as White Bear Island, where they put the canoes back into the river. On July 4,1805, the portage was completed. The men celebrated Independence Day by firing their guns and drinking the last of the whiskey they had brought with them.

This was one of the most difficult parts of the journey the expedition encountered. The expedition was now leaving the prairie and heading toward the mountains."

We drove to the north side of the river to get a look at Great Falls.

"...my ears were saluated with the agreeable sound of a fall of water...I saw the spray arrise above the plain like a collumn of smoke....soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri.....the river was one continued sene of rappids and cascades which I readily perceived could not be encountered with our canoes..."

Meriwether Lewis June 13, 1805

Depiction of what it would have looked like for Lewis & Clark.

It makes me wish they never built a dam here, but I am sure the community enjoys the electricity from the dam.

A shot from the suspension bridge I crossed to see the dam from Ryan's Island.

This is the Missouri down river from the dam.

Tomorrow we finish the drive to Glacier National Park.