Carl Henning

We stopped to catch up on the history of the Corps of Discovery at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Montana. This is another museum under the auspices of the National Forest Service like the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center (see the post).

We stopped in to Great Falls, Wyoming to see some museums… and the Great Falls. The falls were an impediment to the Corps of Discovery as they explored the new Louisiana Purchase. (You probably know the Corps of Discovery as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.) The road to the falls had a sign that said the park was closed. It was, but we could still see the falls. With video.

I’ve encountered Buffalo Bill in Colorado where he is buried and last year in Cody, Wyoming at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (see the Buffalo Bill post). This year we’re back again.

Next stop in Wyoming was Thermopolis. It’s famous for its hot springs at Hot Springs State Park.
The state operates the bath house for free, but we skipped that. Here’s what we did see.

In Casper, Wyoming we stopped at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center.  This was an amazing display of life on all of the trails west. We even got to “ride a wagon” fording the North Platte River. There were many…

We are traveling in Wyoming with our first stop at the Cheyenne Depot Museum. In addition to the story of the train infrastructure in Cheyenne, it houses a huge model railroad layout in HOn3 scale.. HOn3 is HO scale narrow gauge railroad. The huge layout took 30 years to build.

Along Route 50 in Colorado is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The canyon’s name stuck because at the bottom of the deep and narrow canyon daylight seldom reaches.

Route 50 from Folsom to Colorado Springs is a long, lonely road, but it is coincident with Interstate 70 in Utah. I70 has some scenic overlooks. And boy are they scenic:

The Great Basin encompasses all of Nevada and part of Utah. But the Great Basin National Park is smaller. We were two of the few visitors at the park on this particular post-Labor Day weekday.

Thar’s gold, not in them there hills, but in the sawmill water race at Sutter’s Mill. Discovered in January 1848, the word eventually spread East to start a rush of gold seekers, the 49ers.