Saturday, July 13, 2024
Gates of the Mountains
I took some trash out this morning and spoke to our next-door neighbor. I asked him if he was ready for another hot day and he said they were headed to the river. I asked him what river and he said they were taking a river cruise on the Missouri. The name of the place was Gates of the Mountains, so Joe and I discussed that as an option while we were at McDonalds (we had not heard of this). I looked online but there were no tickets available today so we decided to make the drive which we thought would take us down the road to Townsend, where we had planned on going. We put the address to the marina in the jeep GPS and it took us to a residence, north of town. So then I got the address on my phone and it turned us around by going on a 5 mile dirt road loop. But we did see six deer on it so not all was lost. It brought us back to I-15 and it was about 15 miles up the highway.
We found it easily enough with the right directions and walked to the ticket office to see if they had any openings on the next boat, which was leaving in 20 minutes. They did and so we got on the boat ride and had a nice two-hour cruise on the Missouri river.
Our boat, an open-air, was the oldest in the fleet. We later saw another tour boat out of this marina, and our captain said it was the newest in the fleet. It had partial cover, comfortable seats, air conditioning.
Right away, we saw a white pelican flying over us, and as soon as we entered the river channel, there was a bald eagle high in the tree. Tour Guide KARI was very good with the history of the river, Lewis and Clark, the Mann Gulch fire which we had heard about at the Smokejumper Museum, the geological formations along the side. It was a very pleasant ride. We did see three big horn sheep along the way, and an osprey as we came back out of the channel.
This is the gulch where the Mann Firefighters lost their lives.
There is one camping area/picnic area on the lake, but only accessible by boat or walk-in 22 miles.
Since we decided to make this trip after we had left the RV, we were ill- prepared: no water, no Chapstick, no sunscreen, Joe had a hat, but I did not, so on the boat ride we were in full sun. I tried to keep my hand over my mouth to keep my lips from getting sunburned, and eventually Joe put his hand on the back of my neck to keep it from getting sunburned. The lady sitting in the seat behind us offered me sunscreen and even applied it. We thought that was really nice of her.
We had one stop at a park with toilets. Most of the people got off, but Joe and I stayed on and moved up to the shade for a few minutes. The group oin the row behind us also came up to the shade. The lady who had given me the sunscreen asked how long we had been married. I thought that was a strange first question. We told her 55 almost 56 years. She nodded her head and said she thought so since we were so loving. She mentioned Joe taking care of me by putting his hand on my neck. We reminded her of her parents, and she was not surprised that we were born and raised in the Midwest. I thought that was very nice of her to say.
We were very fortunate to get to see 3 Rocky Mountain Sheep. 2 adults and a baby. They were very hard to see on the side of the cliff, their color blended right in. Another boat had spotted them and pointed them out to us.
.
The Missouri River is the longest flowing river in the United States and joins the Mississippi at St. Louis. When she turned us around, she went from one side of the lake to the other, showing us how the river channel got its name Gates of the Mountains (that's the Rocky Mountains). From one side, the channel looks wide open, but as you’re near the other shore, it looks like it closes and there’s no way through. That's was Merriweather Lewis saw and how he named it.
.
The Horse Gulch Fire here is about 20 miles east of this river. The potty break had been shortened from normally 20 minutes to 10 minutes because of the fire and tomorrow they are not allowing that stop anymore. Kari said she can take out tourists if she can cut the ride down to less than an hour. An hour or more requires a restroom break.
Kari talked about the geology of the canyon walls and how old the rock walls are. She used the term “BCE” Before Common Era. I had never heard that before so I googled it when we got back. Simply put, BCE (Before Common Era) is a secular version of BC (before Christ.) Wouldn't want to offend anyone and another attempt to change history, I guess.
Our captain, Kari, was excellent. She was great with the history and very interesting.
So we got that done and came back to town. There is a ranch just before the lake, and apparently they raise sheep. After we started traveling, I wished I had taken pictures of all the "XING" signs we had seen, but that was after Alaska, so I figured I had already missed the most of them. However, here was one I don't think we had seen before.
At the turnoff to this place was a statue of a very tall man and his dog. We didn't walk through the weeds to see who it was but assumed it was the man who settled here.
We were still thinking about taking the drive down to Townsend, but I told Joe I thought by the time we stopped and ate we would be tired from being in the sun for two hours and maybe we should save that drive for tomorrow so that’s what we did. We stopped for lunch, went back to the RV and rested and then went to the new Kevin Costner movie Horizon. Just before we left the the RV the electricity started cutting off and then coming right back on. Joe walked around outside and decided the whole park was doing that, but we really don’t know if did it. It probably did it three times. We are hoping it would be all right, so we headed downtown to the movie theatre. Next door to the theatre was a bike shop with this interesting piece of artwork. Mazie was our bike lady and she would have liked this.
When we got back, the electricity was on, and the movie was OK. It's three hours long, typical of those kinds of shows but it had Cowboys in Indians and so Joe was in his element. That was Chapter 1 and there are supposed to be 4 more Chapters. I heard they had intended to release Chapter 2 in August but decided to delay that to allow more people to see Chapter 1. Sounds like they are not getting the viewers they expected.
Tomorrow is our last day here. We have done everything we knew to do, plus the river boat ride, so we are ready for the next town, Butte. We will probably do the Townsend drive and be done with Helena.
No comments:
Post a Comment