Clearwater River & Hell’s Canyon
“In the Wake of Lewis and Clark” offered competing attractions to travelers aboard the Sea Bird today. While the ship remained docked at Clarkston, Washington, after a 38-hour voyage up the Columbia and Snake Rivers (passing through eight locks and dams along the way), passengers could choose between a jet-boat excursion more than fifty miles on up the Snake River, or a Lewis-and-Clark-intensive bus tour about seventy miles up the Clearwater River to Kamiah, Idaho. The lure of this competition split the group almost equally in half.
A jet-boat ride at speeds approaching 45 miles per hour on the Snake River is not to be missed. The trip passes into the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and abounds in scenery and wildlife. Today’s journey began under cloudy skies, with a sprinkle of rain, but soon the sun appeared and photographers aboard the Beemer’s boat marveled at the unmatched natural lighting. Along the shores are the remnants of ancient homesteads and mining claims, several tributaries including the Salmon and Grand Ronde Rivers, and one of the best petroglyph displays anywhere in the nation. These carvings, which may be as much as 2,000 years old, resemble nothing so much as astronauts or extraterrestrial beings. Scholars still debate their provenance and meaning. The region’s wildlife also thrilled onlookers. Birds, fish (it is steelhead season), and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (two bands of twenty, right on shore) occasioned long pauses and photo-ops. No one regretted this choice.
The Clearwater Connection, hosted by the redoubtable Lin Laughey of Kooskia, Idaho, took a busload of history-minded folk through the densest collection of significant Lewis and Clark sites anywhere along the Trail. Despite over two hundred years of development, many of these sites look exactly like they did in 1805 and 1806. We tracked the Corps of Discovery as it stumbled out of the Bitterroot Mountains in September ’05, nearly dead from starvation, exposure, and intense gastro-intestinal distress. Sick men somehow managed to hollow out five huge and heavy log canoes and proceed down the Clearwater River with the current as their ally for the first time since the Ohio River in 1803. The Expedition came back to the Clearwater in 1806 nearly a month too soon, so eager was it to cross the mountains and head home. The Nez Perce Indians were absolutely essential to the survival and success of the Corps in both cases.
No one today would trade their experience for anything—except, perhaps, the other contingent’s day.
“In the Wake of Lewis and Clark” offered competing attractions to travelers aboard the Sea Bird today. While the ship remained docked at Clarkston, Washington, after a 38-hour voyage up the Columbia and Snake Rivers (passing through eight locks and dams along the way), passengers could choose between a jet-boat excursion more than fifty miles on up the Snake River, or a Lewis-and-Clark-intensive bus tour about seventy miles up the Clearwater River to Kamiah, Idaho. The lure of this competition split the group almost equally in half.
A jet-boat ride at speeds approaching 45 miles per hour on the Snake River is not to be missed. The trip passes into the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and abounds in scenery and wildlife. Today’s journey began under cloudy skies, with a sprinkle of rain, but soon the sun appeared and photographers aboard the Beemer’s boat marveled at the unmatched natural lighting. Along the shores are the remnants of ancient homesteads and mining claims, several tributaries including the Salmon and Grand Ronde Rivers, and one of the best petroglyph displays anywhere in the nation. These carvings, which may be as much as 2,000 years old, resemble nothing so much as astronauts or extraterrestrial beings. Scholars still debate their provenance and meaning. The region’s wildlife also thrilled onlookers. Birds, fish (it is steelhead season), and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (two bands of twenty, right on shore) occasioned long pauses and photo-ops. No one regretted this choice.
The Clearwater Connection, hosted by the redoubtable Lin Laughey of Kooskia, Idaho, took a busload of history-minded folk through the densest collection of significant Lewis and Clark sites anywhere along the Trail. Despite over two hundred years of development, many of these sites look exactly like they did in 1805 and 1806. We tracked the Corps of Discovery as it stumbled out of the Bitterroot Mountains in September ’05, nearly dead from starvation, exposure, and intense gastro-intestinal distress. Sick men somehow managed to hollow out five huge and heavy log canoes and proceed down the Clearwater River with the current as their ally for the first time since the Ohio River in 1803. The Expedition came back to the Clearwater in 1806 nearly a month too soon, so eager was it to cross the mountains and head home. The Nez Perce Indians were absolutely essential to the survival and success of the Corps in both cases.
No one today would trade their experience for anything—except, perhaps, the other contingent’s day.
