In 1998 I started my studies to prepare for my travels along the Lewis and Clark Trail. In 2003, as the 200th anniversary approached I began my travels across the country and the back roads along the Lewis and Clark Trail that are still there today. Realizing that the trail was approximately 8,000 miles long I thought it would be a physically challenging trip but after the first year of travel I have returned to the Trail almost every year to continue to explorer their trail and campsites.

Traveling by motorcycle, the trail has now developed into 32,000 miles of discoveries. Many of the actual campsites and sites of historical events are in very remote locations. Two of my favorites are where York picked wild turnip greens and the site where Sgt. Field stabbed a Blackfoot thief in the heart. Many many of these historical sites are at road intersections for convenience, but the actual sites are several miles away on private property, under a freeway bridge, or across a wheat field on the banks of the Missouri in North Dakota.

My initial travels started in Louisville, KY where Lewis and Clark first met with General George Rogers Clark at Locus Grove to discuss the beginning of their travels and the supplies and boats they had prepared. From Louisville they and I continued on to St Louis (Camp Dubois) and the official starting point of St Charles, Missouri. As the 200th Anniversary party paddled down the Woods River into the muddy Missouri, I was following along the parallel freeway to meet and camp with the re-inactment crew at their first camp at Cole Creek.

My first year of travel was a rough “getting to know the trail” experience. This “getting to know” ride quickly revealed to me that few people have actually traveled the real trail. I became facinated that a rock ledge Clark described in his journals is still there today. I laughed when I headed up a remote back road towards Cut Bank, Montana and recall Lewis complaining in his journal about how tired his horse was crossing the terrain…I’ll share this with you in a picture and you will also see why his horse was tired.

After traversing through a series of residential streets I sat for an hour along the Columbia River at the campsite Clark described as being “as miserable as I have ever been in his life”. Crossing the Columbia to built their winter fort at Fort Clatsop, everyone’s leather clothing was soaking wet and almost too heavy to wear, they were again out of food and cold. Sacajawea was busy making root bread for Jean Baptiste, and they were camped on a muddy swampy marsh along the only shoreline in sight. This camp is today marked with a detail historical marker that is easily confirmed by Clark’s coordinates and rough sketch of the campsite. Like then, my day was also a day of misery as I waded across their muddy campsite under a persistent cold rain. As I leave their camp I too pass 20 elk and wondered if these were the ancestors seen and shot by Dourillard and the Field brothers. Allow me to show you the herd of elk grazing near their campsite.

My travels are not over and I will begin anew this spring but I invite you to travel along with me on my DVD of 1,200 photographs and the accompanying story. A very short “Preview” of my travels can be found under the following YouTube site and you may purchase my DVD of over 1,200 photographs for $25.95+shipping by emailing:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQoae-LCkio

Thanks for looking,