Seaside, OR 10-17-09

This is an artists's rendering of what the salt operation was like. I hope they got some of those folks to help them haul the sea water from the ocean to the ovens.

Seaside, Or 10-17-09

Lewis and Clark sent 3 men from Fort Clatsop to Seaside for several months to boil ocean water to gain salt. The corps had run out of salt and needed it to preserve their food and to trade. this spot was identified by a Clatsop girl whose Grandfather had helped the three men. Now it is in the first block of houses from the Prom- a Promenade that runs between the houses and the ocean, but there are blocks of sea grass betweenthe houses and the ocean.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

This stylish little number is the hat that the Native Americans wore. Picture Hopalong Cassidy wearing one of these??? Yet- they kept the rain off, which they really needed!!!

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

Here are the women in their lives. To the left Lewis' mother, who taught him all of the medical info he used on the trip, on the right the young lady Clark was pining for during the trip.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

This lovely contraption is a cradleboard for the Flathead tribe. They put their babies in it and squashed their heads so that their foreheads went from their nose to thepoint on thetop of their heads!!

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

Lewis and Clark were hoping to meet a traqding vessel on the Pacific to give them more beads and other trading items for their trip back, all of their beads tobacco and other trading goods were almost gone. In addition to the white and blue "padre" beads shown, the Corps also traded Lewis and Clark beads, a black or dark blue bead, oval, about 3/4 of an inch long with white or red swirls on it, sometimes called a feather bead.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

The Native Americans caught the salmon, and dried it so it could be stored and traded.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

This is a Native American cradleboard, similar to the one Sacajawea would have used.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

My girl Sacajawea, shivering in the cold and rain, with her baby Pomp on her back. How did she either diaper or toilet train that baby at Fort Clatsop? I do not believe any of the Journals covered the really important stuff.

Fort Clatsop, OR 10-16-09

The path from Visitor Center to Fort. Right about here was the biggest loudest thunder and lightening I, ve heard in a long time. The down tree came down in 2007 from Lightening, so I missed that one.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

These trees are all less than 100 years old. In fact, in 1906, 100 years after the Corps, this land was a potato farm, with only one tree. But, it feels like an ancient forest.

Fort Clatsop 10-16-09

A diagram of the Fort

Fort Clatsop, 10-16-09

When Lewis and Clark arrived here, a Native American fishing village, they thought it was abandoned, so they dismantled their buildings to build this fort. Actually, the Indians came here every fishing season to harvest salmon, it was not really 'abandoned.' The same Indians had braved the violent river to deliver salmon to them when they were stuck in the "Dismal Nitch,' so it might be the first example of how we would treat the Native Americans in the future (written from Chinook Winds Tribal Casino- the ultimate revenge)

WA to OR 10-16-09

This is the bridge from Megler WA to Astoria, OR, about a 4 mile bridge, easier than Lewis and Clark's canoe ride, but doesn't it kinda look like you are going to drive into the drink????? That's what we thought!

Near Station Camp 10-16-09

It is still raining, and Station Camp is a mere roadside marker.

The road to Cape Disappointment State Park

So I guess you can see why an RV can't go up or down here.

Cape Disappointment 10-16-09

A model of the area. The museum is at the Cape- the north shore of the Columbia (You are here"). Long Beach, where they walked to see the whale, is on the top left. Station Camp, their north shore camp, Washington is on the bay, about midway. Fort Clatsop, is on the southern, Oregon side, at the end of the Lewis and Clark river, the bottom blue inlet. They arrived in November, so it was colder then than now(Oct 16) and it was raining (of course) They spent 6 days on a pile of driftwood, scrunched up against a cliff because the Columbia was too rough for them to continue, they called that place the "Dismal Nitch". Finally, they could continue down a little further to "Station Camp" from here they walked 8 miles to the ocean at Long Beach. It was at Station Camp that the first recorded vote in US history allowed a woman -Sacajawea- and a Black man-York, Lewis' slave to vote on whether to stay on the WA side of the Columbia or to go to the Oregon side. Oregon won- there was more elk for food on that side. So they went east on the Columbia til it was safe enough to cross over and went to Fort Clatsop, a Native American fishing village.

Cape Disappointment 10-16-09

WOW. This is a razor box supposedly carved by Sacajawea and given to Patrick Gass.

Cape Disappointment 10-16-09

The actual hatchet belonging to Patrick Gass, who was the Corps' main carpenter, was given by his descendants.

Cape Disappointment 10-16-09

A quote from the Journals. Actually, the noise they hear is really the waves of the columbia, they are still pretty far from the ocean, or ocian!

Cape Disappointment, WA 10-16-09

Here are models of the boats that Lewis and Clark used. On the bottom, a pirogue. Next, the biggest-the keelboat they used at the outset. To the right, a small bullboat-one skin stretched over a frame. Then the "experiment", an iron boat frame that they had made in Virginia, that they planned to stretch skins over when they reached water. They hauled the experiment over hill and dale, and it sank the first time they tried to use it. Above that is the dugout canoes that the Indians showed them how to build. On the top, the Chinook canoes, which braved the violent Columbia at the mouth of the ocean.

Cape Disappointment, State Park WA 10-16-09

There is a wonderful Lewis and Clark museum at Cape Disappointment State Park, WA. Unfortunately, one cannot drive an RV up the 1/2 mile road, straight uphill, one has to walk. Luckily, 2 crab fisherman, who had given up fishing because the weather was so HORRIBLE, picked soaking wet me up along the road, or I would not have made it. From the windows of the museum, that looked out over the Cape, I could not even see the railing around the 5 foot wide deck, much less the ocean.

My boys, Bill and Meriwether!

Long Beach, WA 10-16-09

Some artwork along the Discovery Trail, an 8 mile trail along the coast, between the town and the ocean. Note the huge expanse of grass surrounding the trail. There is a sign at the end of the road, just before the beach which says: do not go in the water, do not let your children go in the water. That sign, just visible in the POURING rain, is there all year long. The water is so cold that hypothermia would set in.

Long Beach, Wa 10-16-09

A replica of the whale that the Corps of Discovery came to visit on the coast in 1805. The Corps journals document the exact location they found the whale, and this is very close, but it actually is the skeleton of a whale beached on the shore in 2000, which the town decided to use to commemorate this Corps event.

Long Beach, WA 10-16-09

A bronze statue, reproducing the tree that Lewis and Clark carved their initials into on the Washington coast.
It is raining so hard, and the wind is blowing so hard that my camera has died- I think water blew in the lens, so some of the pix are missing!!