Lewis and Clark Festival

I went to a Lewis and Clark Festival last Saturday.

Like the history nerd I am, I LOVED IT.

First say hello to Seaman.

This first picture is a Newfoundland, the same breed as Seaman, the dog that went along on with the Corp of Discovery.

There was a crew of men dressed up like the men on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the first one I came across said, “Do you have any questions?”

The man did NOT know who he was dealing with.

Mary replies, “I have one hundred questions.”

They just all looked thrilled. So genuinely happy to find someone who would get excited along with them.

I probably talked to these guys for an hour. I wish I’d had more time. 

The guy on the far right went on the Re-Enactment to celebrate the Lewis and Clark bi-Centennial almost two decades ago.

I remember that re-enactment. We took our school to the river to watch the Corp come up the Missouri River.

Every one of these men was playing a part of one of the crew. They all had stuff to say. Very fun to talk to them.

This gentleman was Meriwether Lewis. Where was Clark? I didn’t even ask!!!

Did you know Meriwether Lewis LIVED in the White House with Thomas Jefferson and acted as his personal secretary for two years? (It wasn’t called the White House back then) And he was a soldier on the far western frontier before that. You know…the far western frontier…OHIO.

Anyway, he was a skilled woodsman, a trained solider, a knowledgeable boatman and a skilled writer. Very educated in all the ways he’d need to be about botany and survival skills. The Corps did not go off without a solid, serious, years-in-the-making plan.

The men were all wearing their everyday uniforms, made out of worn out ship sails. But they all had dress uniforms, too. To present a dignified image to the native folks they met. As if those white sail cloth outfits wouldn’t have impress them. Here is Lewis holding his dress hat.

Captain Lewis presented samples of the company muskets. He said they brought along 17 Tennessee riflemen strictly to hunt food. The Corps ate the equivalent of one entire buffalo a day. Thirty men.

I loved this guy. He was wearing the actual dress uniform. He showed me how to load his musket (no gunpowder involved but it was great). He’s standing in front of a replica of the Keelboat they took upriver.

This couple was so fascinating. Not part of the costumed characters but they are holding up medical equipment that went along on the journey. She’s holding the tourniquet. He’s holding the bone saw. Except for lancets for bleeding people, this was pretty much all medicine was back then. I was horrified, in an entirely polite and genteel way. Oh they had other medicine (not these folks but the world) but a lot of them were strange concoctions like Dr. Rush’s pills that were more snake oil than anything else.

This man said, “Once a wound was infected, it was amputate or die. These tools saved lives.

There is a Lewis and Clark Lake by Onawa, Iowa and there is an interpretive center alongside the lake. There are TWO replicas of the keel boat that they road up the river–the man in the dress uniform two pictures above is standing in front of one of the replica keelboats. Lewis and Clark took this boat and too pirogues when was a really big canoe-like boat. All three boats carried tons of supplies…so REALLY big canoes.

Most of the time the boats were pulled upstream with ropes. All the way from St. Louis to the Rocky Mountains!!!

They honestly couldn’t eat enough food hardly to stay strong enough to do this work. The Corps re-enactor characters slept in these tents at the festival. 

At the festival, a big chunk of the west side of Lewis and Clark Lake was surrounded by tents like these above.

Here is a map of the trail they followed. An unbelievable journey. And I am right now reading Undaunted Courage, the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Stephen Ambrose. What this Corps of Discovery set out to do was a gargantuan undertaking. Something no one in the world had ever accomplished.

Explore the uncharted west of America before it was firmly in America’s hands. They didn’t even know the Rocky Mountains were bigger than the Appalachians. They thought, with perhaps a short portage, the Missouri River joined with the Columbia River. They were searching for a water route that crossed the entire continent.

Fun Fact: Lewis did all the planning and worked on it for YEARS with President Jefferson, while Jefferson was working on buying New Orleans from Napolean. His diplomats came back, not with New Orleans but with Louisiana which had very vague borders…Thomas Jefferson claimed America all the way to the Continental Divide in Montana. Of course there was no Montana then.

Lewis knew Clark and had served with him for six months and was friends with him though almost exclusively through letters. But Lewis did all the planning. All the buying. Clark joined the expedition after Lewis set out from Pittsburgh. At the time Clark lived in Clarksville (named a town after himself???) Which was in Indian Territory, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. And they were command equals. Which was very unusual. But it was all Lewis in the planning stages.

Besides the costumed Corps members, there were tents and crafts. One tent was all animal furs. There was jewelry and leather goods, all hand crafted. (well, I didn’t personally spot any ‘Made in China’ labels, so I’m hopeful)

There were buffalo burgers and, well, the Methodist church served pie. Might not have been authentic but it was delicious!

It’s a wonder I’m not there still. It helped move me along that it was around 100 degrees, but even that, those men had to endure that back then as they made their journey. At no point could they get in their car and turn the air conditioner way, way up.

I loved it.

And I’ve got a book releasing in July and I should be talking about that.

I made a trailer. 

Inventions of the Heart (canva.com)

 Inventions of the Heart

Book #2

The Lumber Baron’s Daughters Series

Releasing July 5

Her heart seeks safety. But will trouble find her even here?

After her sister’s marriage, Michelle Stiles is left hiding at Two Harts Ranch with the handsome but stubborn Zane Hart. She’s managed to stay one step ahead of her stepfather and his devious plans, but if he finds her, she will no longer be safe.

Zane has problems of his own. Having discovered a gold mine on his property, he must figure out how to harvest it without kicking off a gold rush. Michelle, educated and trained to run her father’s business, wants to manage all aspects of the mine, but Zane thinks for a person so smart she can have some misguided ideas. Running the mining operation will be a dangerous job, and he can’t risk putting her in harm’s way.

But danger finds Michelle anyway when she’s suddenly attacked. If they go to the sheriff, they’ll reveal her location, but if they do nothing . . . their troubles have only just begun.