2021-08-14-Saturday-Havre MT to Great Falls MT-128 miles

Pretty ok breakfast at the hotel and chatted with the three older Harley guys who stayed in the same place we stayed last night as well. I didn't hear any trains, but I'm hard of hearing. The hotel seems to be used by the train crews since Dave saw a railroad signup sheet of some kind and there were a couple trains "parked" out back. Pretty nice place with a sauna and pool so we assume this is the place to go when it's 40 below zero, the tractor won't start and the kids are driving you crazy.

It was kinda smokey again so the sun is sorta brown & orange. We decided to take a short riding day and spend more time in Great Falls where the USDA Forest Service has a really nice Lewis & Clark place. More wheat fields but we suspect that we should have been able to see the Rockies if the air was clear. The air got worse the closer we got to Great Falls.

We took a break at a nice overlook of the Missouri River. From all the informational signs we are getting a picture of how busy it was here. Fort Benton was the final stop on the Missouri for the riverboats in the mid 1800's which owned all the shipping until the railroads came in the late 1800's and put the riverboats out of business. From here manufactured goods were shipped all over western Canada and the northwest US via wagons, oxen and horses, and all the furs were shipped back on steamboats. It was hopping up here shortly after L&C came through.

Into Great Falls, quick coffee stop and then off to the L&C Interpretive Center.

This place did a great job pulling all the pieces together of the entire trip. Relations with the Native Americans, How things had already changed before L&C got there (Horses & Guns), all the in-fighting between tribes, timing of smallpox, etc. Now this is kinda nerdy, but I saw the chronometer (aka clock) they carried, which was the most expensive thing they had. Longitude can really only be determined if you know what time it is, and so you need a clock that can keep accurate time for a year or two. The English had a big competition in the early to mid 1700's to help ship captains determine longitude because they kept crashing British ships because they did not know where they were. A guy names Harrison solved it by perfecting a clock that kept time on a rolling ship (those pendulums suck in a storm at sea).

Anyway, they had a reproduction of Lewis & Clarks clock. I told you it was nerdy.

So we found a hotel earlier because there isn't enough time to end up anywhere interesting and we are kinda beat after 2 weeks of non-stop riding. Tomorrow we gotta look into this smoke & fire thing, and Covid is getting ugly here too with mandatory masks and closed lobbies. The Nice USDA Forest Service person said they had 13 of 15 staff off fighting fires and a whole bunch of them got Covid. Kinda creepy..

Odometer:5326-5198=128 miles