Day 9: Great Falls MT - Dillon MT

So, yes, Great Falls.  The Hidatsa, neighbours of the Mandan back in North Dakota, knew the Upper Missouri pretty well and were thus able to advise L & C that the river they wanted had a gert big waterfall.  On it.  As things turned out there were actually five separate ones spread over a Several of miles of river, to the consternation of all as they had to get out and walk round them.  Shifting men, boats and Stuffs took the best part of three weeks as the river drops the thick end of 200 metres.  The lowest falls downstream were Big (or Great) Falls, some 30 metres high but if you go and look for them today you won't find 'em coz the local power company built a dam on the site around the time WW1 was kicking off:

Ryan Dam, formerly the site of Big Falls

Next upstream is Crooked Falls, which are still as they were back in 1805 and are thus quite tricky actually to reach.  Especially if you're on the wrong side of the river.  But they look like this:

Photo of a painting of Crooked Falls

Not far upstream lay Rainbow and Colter Falls.  The former has been turned into another dam while the latter are now buried in the lake behind said dam.

Rainbow Dam

Finally, and closest to the city of Great Falls, were the Black Eagle Falls:

Black Eagle Dam

Way to go, white man!  Just downstream of Black Eagle Dam is the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, which has a well thought-out museum in which I took few pictures.

Replica of the frame of the Iron Boat.  The frame was easily dismantled for transport and the idea was that once they got above the falls, they'd assemble the frame, cover it with bison hides and seal the gaps with pine resin.  The problem with this was that there were no pine trees anywhere near the falls, and alternative sealants didn't work.  They buried the frame, recovered it on the way back and took it with them back to St. Louis, after which its fate is unkown.

They also have a lift that takes you down to the riverside trail where you can get up close and personal with the local birb life:

Cormorant planning a raid on the nearby fish hatchery

Horrible Gooses shouting abuse at the gulls next door

There is also, natch, yet another likeness of Seaman the dogg of newfoundland breed.

Anyway, as tempting as it was to linger in the museum for hours, I didn't and got onto southbound I-15 across more of those tedious wheat fields, though at least now I could see Actual Mountains up ahead.  The highway and the river follow a similar path through the said mountains once you get to them and as motorways go this bit of I-15 is a lot better than, say, the M25.  Very twisty and, moreover, turny.  And much of the twisty-turny bit was down to a single lane contraflow.  And heading north was a convoy of trucks, each carrying a GBFO wind turbine blade.  I bet that kept the crews on their toes.

On the other side of those particular mountains lies the State Capital, Helena.  I didn't linger here either but pressed on to Three Forks where the Missouri officially forms at the confluence of the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson rivers.

The Mighty Missouri starts here and heads off to the right

Our heroes elected to follow the Jefferson on account of it being both the biggest and the westiest.  They were at this juncture still hoping for a nice thin mountain range with a handy tributary of the Mighty Columbia flowing out of it - the mouth of the Columbia being already well-known to sailors of divers nationalities - but were, alas, to be disappointed.  As We Will See.

Talking of disappointment, my phone has been playing silly buggers.  Last night in Great Falls (pop. > 60,000) it refused to connect to a network.  This is a PITA when Horseybank plc wants to send you a 2FA verification txt msg.  Today it did similar, with the result that booking tomorrow night's resting place went:

• get almost, but not quite, to the point of clicking "Pay" on iPad
• go outside with iPad in one hand and phone in the other
• reboot phone; shuffle around car park swearing until phone finds an modicum of signal
• standing infuriatingly still, tap "Pay"
• tell Horseybank to send six-digit wossname
• wait anxiously until phone plays little melody
• try to enter six-digit wossname while not dropping either device

Also with it being a Bank Holibob weekend over here rooms are two or three times the usual price.  Bah!