8-26-17 Eastward Ho… (WA, ID, MT, ND)

Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We finished up our visit on the west coast of Oregon and headed east.  We had already visited most of the Rocky Mountains last year, so we were going to quickly pass across them, with a few stops, along the way to our destination of the Great Plains.  

Mt St Helens Post Eruption 1980 (NPS Photo)

Our first stop was Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington.  We had finished last year’s trip at Mt Rainer, but it was too late in the season to explore Mt. St. Helens, even though it was close by.  Although it was now August, weather was again a problem.  This time it was not the unusually heavy snows that prevented us from exploring many of the higher roads or trails, or the wet from melting snow causing mudslides and road or trail closures, but now it was the heavy smoke from Canadian and Washington forest fires causing very low visibility.

Mt St Helens Barely Visible in Smoke

We could barely see Mt. St. Helens from the Visitor Center, where the volcano  usually towers over the area.  We stopped at numerous overlooks along the way, but couldn’t see much of anything.  We finally got to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, above the center of the 1980 eruption, where you would normally see all the details of the eruption: the eruption crater, the new magma mounds in the center of the crater (which are trying to rebuild the mountain), the blast zone, and the square miles of mud, ash, and pyroclastic flows.  We were disappointed as we could see Almost Nothing; we could only barely make out a slight outline of the mountain with no detail.  We listened to two ranger talks on the deck overlooking the blast area, and the ranger told us that the visibility the previous day was worse and the smoke so bad they had to do their talks inside.  We hiked a short portion of the Eruption Trail, but the visibility was no better.  The devastation area was huge, over 234 square miles; 57 lives were lost, even though they evacuated everyone they thought was at risk.  The eruption destroyed more than 10 times the area they originally thought was at risk.

Replanted Area in Foreground (30 yrs later)

One of the most interesting aspects of our visit to Mt. St. Helens was the comparison of two different approaches for recovery of the desolated forest land.   Weyerhaeuser, which owns a significant amount of forest land around Mt. St. Helens, lost hundreds of square miles of forests.  We visited Weyerhaeuser’s educational visitor center.  After the eruption, they rapidly harvested all the blown down or burnt trees (they were dead anyway) from their privately owned land, which took 2 years, and then replanted almost all the land over the following 7 years.  After experimenting with planting seedlings in the ash, they learned they needed to dig through the ash and plant seedlings in the native soil. Today, 30 years after the replanting, recovery seems to going well.  The replanted land is vibrant, green, with a healthy ecosystem for most of the plants and animals normally found in the southern Washington region. 



Weyerhaeuser and Parkland Boundary

Alternatively, the US Forest Service took the understandably different approach on the public land.  The Forest Service has used the “let nature take its course approach”, and there is nothing growing yet where the ash, blast zone, pyroclastic flow, and tree knockdowns occurred.  It is an interesting comparison. There are a couple of overlooks where you can see the demarcation line between the public and private land which was impacted the exact same way…the public land is still brown and desolate, while the private land is a vibrant green.  We think this is one time we can say that the man approach is more productive; they have accelerated the recovery by decades, even hundreds of years!  We are fortunate to have the public and private approaches to see.

Coeur d' Alene Lake

We left our last volcanic stop of our journey and the Northwest and continued east to Coeur d’ Alene Idaho, a lake we had heard a lot of great things about.  It is a large beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, and by large homes and resorts; our campground was right on the lake with a small sandy lake beach.  There is very limited public beach access to the lake – we saw only a few public “beaches”…. some only 50 foot wide and they were packed.  It was very hot, and we still had a lot of smoke from the fires, so it was hot and humid. 

Smokey Sunset over Coeur d' Alene Lake

Celebrating Bob's BD

The lake was full of “toys”:  boats of all sizes, personal water craft, kayaks, swimmers, skiers, even a parasailer.  There were quite a few marinas with lots of boats in them, but surprisingly, most of the boats were not out on a hot Sunday in August (the lake was already crowded with the few boats that were out). We were there for only 2 nights since we only wanted to see what all the Coeur d’Alene excitement was about – it is a beautiful lake. It is also a winter playground due the significant snow, but probably too cold for us.  We celebrated Bob’s BD (the 30^th anniversary of his 43^rd BD), with an excellent dinner at Beverly’s at the Coeur d’ Alene Resort.  The smoky sky did make for beautiful, very red sunsets over the lake.



Two of Great Falls Missouri River Cataracts

Great Falls Dangerous Beauty

Great Falls Dam and Falls

Our next stopover was Great Falls, Montana and we explored another of Lewis and Clark’s stopping points along their journey.  On their way west, Lewis and Clark spent three weeks near what is now Great Falls to portage 18 miles around the five large waterfalls and rapids on the Missouri River.  The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Great Falls documents their entire trip and highlights the Great Falls portage. Each of the 5 falls that presented such a problem now has a dam on it: the same elevation drop that provides for the beautiful falls that had to be portaged, also provides the drop power needed for hydroelectric power.  The rapids and smaller falls have been covered by the resulting lakes behind each dam.  Each of the dammed falls have very little water going over the rock drops; most of the water goes into the hydroelectric plants.  The falls must have been spectacular at one time…as when Lewis and Clark first described them.

We continued east and camped in Hardin Montana to see the Little Big Horn National Monument, the site of Custer’s Last Stand.   One of the few victories for the Native Americans during the great Sioux War of 1876, the fight was an overwhelming victory against the 7th Cavalry, a force of 700 men led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.  Five of the 7th Cavalry's twelve companies were annihilated and Custer was killed.  Here the Lakota, trying to protect their way of life and families, fought back when Custer attacked them.  Unfortunately, the Army intelligence was bad - they now believe there were over 11,000 Native Americans at the encampment, not 1,000 they expected   

Markers where Custer and His Soldiers Fell, Last Stand Hill

The Battle of the Little Big Horn was the Indians’ greatest victory and the Army’s worst defeat in the long and bloody Plains Indian War. The Indians were not allowed to revel in the victory for long, however. The massacre of Custer and his 7th Cavalry outraged many Americans and only confirmed the image of the bloodthirsty Indians in their minds, and the government became more determined to destroy or tame the hostile Indians. The Army redoubled its efforts and drove home the war with a vengeful fury. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations.

Lakota Indian Marker, Little Bighorn

Since the soldiers who fought at Last Stand Hill were all killed, the only Army Calvary accounts were from a nearby company who were fighting about 5 miles down the ridge.  They buried the fallen soldiers a couple of days later.  The soldier’s accounts differed from the surviving native Indian oral accounts about the battle of Last Stand Hill, and not surprisingly, the historians believed and used the Army’s version for a century.   Interestingly, a fire destroyed the grass on the entire Last Stand Hill and much of the battlefield in 1984.  The fire exposed many “newly discovered” battlefield artifacts which allowed archeologists the opportunity to more thoroughly investigate the battlefield.  Metal detectors and modern technology were used to find the spent cartridges and archeologists were able to reconstruct the battle since the Calvary and the Native Americans used different weapons.  Guess what? The archeologist-reconstructed version of the battle better matched the Crow people’s oral history version…and history was rewritten.  There are markers showing where the fighters in the battle died:  white for the soldiers, and red for the Native Americans.  Only a few of the fallen Native Americans places are marked because most of their families did not want them to be marked. 



Pompey's Pillar

Clark Carving on Pompey's Pillar

William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, stopped at Pompey’s Pillar (a uniquely isolated sandstone tower and now a US National Monument) on the Little Missouri River during his return trip to St. Louis. Clark and Lewis split up on the return trip so that Lewis could go north on the Missouri River to find the upper reaches of the Louisiana Purchase. There are Native American pictographs on the sandstone pillar and unfortunately, graffiti carved over some of the pictographs.  The most famous carving, “W. Clark July 1806”, was carved in the sandstone by William Clark and described in his detailed notes and maps.  The carving is now protected under glass since it is the only physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark journey along the entire route.  

Pictograph, Pictograph Cave, MT

Pictograph Cave Exhibit Picture

We also visited Pictograph Cave State Park in Montana.  The pictographs and petroglyphs have been fading and eroding quickly; some of the sandstone is flaking off taking the historic “artwork” with it.   An entire turtle pictograph fell off in 2013.  We hiked up to the cave; the exhibits showed pictures of the pictographs in much better condition, as they were only 10-15 years ago, but the actual artwork now almost impossible to see.  If the exhibits had not been there…you would not have found the pictographs.  The ranger told us that you cannot see even half of what you could see 5 years ago.  Erosion, humidity, etc are all working on the artwork. If you want to see this, you need to go soon.

Painted Cliffs, Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Our final stop on this eastward trip was Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands of North Dakota (as opposed to the more famous South Dakota Badlands).  Thank you Teddy! We finally got away from the smoke and haze from the western fires… but were back into cooler and wet weather.  The ND Badlands are beautiful in a more rugged way, and the colors on the exposed cliffs are vibrant.  The herds of bison were similar to those in Yellowstone; the females and babies in large herds together, with the males singly out in the remote areas.  However, since rutting season was not yet over, there was a male with each small group of females…trying to do their “thing”. 

Male Bison Grazing Next to Our Jeep

This national park gave us a new respect for Teddy Roosevelt. He is often considered “the conservationist president”, but as a young man he went to ND to hunt bison before they disappeared.  In the span of 25 years, bison went from 40 – 60 million to just 250 to 300 head in private hands.  The decimation of bison, and the eradication of elk, bighorn sheep, deer and other game species was a loss which Roosevelt felt indicative of society's perception of our natural resources. After living as a rancher in ND in his early 20s, he saw the effects of overgrazing, and suffered the loss of his ranches because of it. While many still considered natural resources inexhaustible, he realized that was not the case. 

Bison Herd, Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Conservation increasingly became one of Roosevelt's main concerns. After becoming president in 1901, in addition to pushing for the Panama Canal, Roosevelt used his authority to protect wildlife and public lands by creating the United States Forest Service (USFS) and establishing 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national monuments by enabling the 1906 American Antiquities Act. During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt protected approximately 230 million acres of public land. 

We have seen much of what Teddy Roosevelt and others have protected and preserved during our 3-year “see all the national parks” journey, and we are grateful for it.  We feel blessed and fortunate to be healthy and to be able see much that our wonderful country has to offer. 

Feel free to pass the blog link on to anyone who might be interested.  

Best to all,

Linda and Bob