Oh, yeah....
It was the journey of a lifetime. We live on the East Coast, so it was the natural place to start. Merriweather Lewis was an aide to Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson sent him to Monticello to study with some of his science and academic associates, then to Philadelphia to study botany, geology and Earth sciences, and finally to Pittsburg where the boats were manufactured and outfitted before the the expedition even started. So we started there, traveling down the Ohio River on backroads, stopping at many places where they stopped along the frontier. Past Louisville and Paducha to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, up river to St. Louis and the Missouri River where they wintered over. Then up the Missouri all the way to the headwaters and the Missouri Breaks in Montana, across the Bitteroots and down the Columbia River to the sea. It took the Corps of Discovery over two years, but when we did the journey we broke it down into three travel seasons of one two months each retracing their adventures. All told we spent 4-5 months dedicated travel on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
There's a tremendous wealth of information both online and in books to fill in the epic story, and many more places of interest and things to do and see along the way that are not strictly tied to Lewis and Clark. About the only portion we didn't retrace was a twenty mile stretch of single-lane unimproved 'road' across the Lehmi Pass in Idaho. If we'd been in an ATV rather than an RV we might have tried it, since there's a lot of historical significance to the site, but discretion proved to be the better part of valor. There's much, much more to the tale, but I would probably end up writing a book, and this IS a Beer forum and not a travel log.
Retirement is wonderful when you have the time and means to immerse yourself in an adventure like this. The only real downside is the extended time away from home base, because you end up having to BUY beer instead of brew it!
Brooo Brother
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