Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for the University of Idaho Press This guide equips visitors to the Lewis and Clark country in Idaho who wish to hike and experience the same wild country where Lewis and Clark met the Nez Perce. The trails in this book will take hikers into terrain of forests, mountains, rivers, and meadows that is virtually the same as it was when Lewis and Clark traversed it two centuries ago.
This guide is an in-depth look at how to get the most out of a visit to the historic Lewis and Clark Trail. The best sites to see and activities to do along the way are given, as well as maps, itineraries, and local resources for lodging and dining.
When the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added a vast and unmapped wilderness area to the fledgling United States, President Thomas Jefferson persuaded Congress to fund a "Corps of Discovery" to explore these lands, and he picked a young man by the name of Meriwether Lewis to lead the way. Lewis and his co-command, Captain William Clark, kept journals of the expedition, and what they found amazed the world: three hundred new species of plants and animals, as well as wilderness prairie and mountains previously undescribed. This book is the first guide to contemporary recreational adventures along the route of America's most famous pioneer expedition. It includes abundant natural history, as well as profiles of the many state and national parks to be found in Lewis and Clark country. Author Elizabeth Grossman divides the trail into six sections and recommends ten "explorations" in each, along with many side trips. She offers suggestions for the best day hiking, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, biking, and wildlife viewing--as well as short, easy walks and car trips to interpretive centers, Native American villages, and scenic vistas. Information on the Corps of Discovery's original campsites is also included, along with excerpts from Lewis and Clark's journals. Though much of the wild lands described in the journals is now gone, travelers can still recognize some of the terrain from these two hundred-year-old descriptions. The present-day adventurer along the Lewis and Clark Trail will doubtless feel a powerful connection with the remaining natural glories that bridge the time from then to now, and will appreciate the opportunity to see this land through the lens of its dramatic history.
“Get your head into the clouds with Aerial Geology.” —The New York Times Book Review Aerial Geology is an up-in-the-sky exploration of North America’s 100 most spectacular geological formations. Crisscrossing the continent from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the Great Salt Lake in Utah and to the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, Mary Caperton Morton brings you on a fantastic tour, sharing aerial and satellite photography, explanations on how each site was formed, and details on what makes each landform noteworthy. Maps and diagrams help illustrate the geological processes and clarify scientific concepts. Fact-filled, curious, and way more fun than the geology you remember from grade school, Aerial Geology is a must-have for the insatiably curious, armchair geologists, million-mile travelers, and anyone who has stared out the window of a plane and wondered what was below.
In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose, the bestselling author of D-Day, presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson's hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis' lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way, Ambrose shows us the American West as Lewis saw it -- wild, awsome, and pristinely beautiful. Undaunted Courage is a stunningly told action tale that will delight readers for generations. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact with white men. He and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorful and realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the North American continent before any other white man; Ambrose describes in detail native peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered along the way, through Lewis's eyes. Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century. This is a book about a hero. This is a book about national unity. But it is also a tragedy. When Lewis returned to Washington in the fall of 1806, he was a national hero. But for Lewis, the expedition was a failure. Jefferson had hoped to find an all-water route to the Pacific with a short hop over the Rockies-Lewis discovered there was no such passage. Jefferson hoped the Louisiana Purchase would provide endless land to support farming-but Lewis discovered that the Great Plains were too dry. Jefferson hoped there was a river flowing from Canada into the Missouri-but Lewis reported there was no such river, and thus no U.S. claim to the Canadian prairie. Lewis discovered the Plains Indians were hostile and would block settlement and trade up the Missouri. Lewis took to drink, engaged in land speculation, piled up debts he could not pay, made jealous political enemies, and suffered severe depression. High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel.
