Thursday
The next leg of our journey follows the Clearwater River and its tributary, the Lochsa River from Lewiston to Missoula. This road is part of both the Lewis and Clark National Trail and the Nez Perce National Trail.
We had lunch near Orofino at Canoe Camp, which was a Nez Perce winter village where the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in order to recover from their long walk across the Great Divide from the Missouri and to build dugout canoes so that they could then travel down stream to the sea. A very interesting piece of the History Jigsaw of the North West.
Moving East along State Route 12 we called in at the Heart Of The Monster, which is a rock mound (natural) which was sacred to the Nez Perce tribe and has the story of Coyote and The Monster ascribed to it.
As we left the mound behind we moved into the Clearwater National Forest, where we planned to camp in one of the more primitive forest campgrounds, however we were greeted with the signs that the area has an active wild fire, this became obvious as we progressed. The blue haze became thicker until it was almost a fog, then you could see the ash falling around us. At a lot of the pull ins green forest fire trucks were parked, some with crew waiting, or eating. The fire was not far away! The wild fire declaration also meant no stopping along the road, and the first three campgrounds that we could stop at were closed, however about 10 miles further on the smoke cleared and we found a pleasant, but small campground by the river, just perfect!
We set up camp and that just left me enough time to have another go at gold panning in the river, after all, we are only about 20 miles from the spot where gold was first discovered in Idaho in 1860. However no luck, but it was good fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment