The drive from Pierre to Bismarck, the capital cities of South and North Dakota, was 217 miles in 35 mph winds with occasional stronger gusts. When the wind hit the motorhome's side it made driving difficult, but when we connected with a tail wind the motorhome became quiet and our fuel milage increased from 7.5 mpg to 12 mpg. We planned to spend the night at Wal*Mart and scout out local campgrounds, but the Wal*Mart parking lot was full so we stopped in front of a closed liquor store. A woman from Dan's SuperMarket walked to our motorhomes and told us we could spend the night in their large parking lot. That was nice of her. One block away we found a Target store in a large mall parking lot and we decided to stay there. About dark a security guard told us we could not stay there due to liability reasons. We explained Target welcomes RVERS and allows them to stay over night but he insisted the mall does not allow over night stays. That is the first time in nearly five years of fulltiming we have been told to leave a parking lot. So we drove to Dan's SuperMarket and asked the manager if we could spend the night in their large parking lot. He said "No." By then the Wal*Mart parking lot had emptied and the manager said "Sure, you can stay." Thank goodness for Wal-Mart. We stopped playing musical chairs with our motorhomes and went to bed. The next morning rewarded Wal*Mart by shopping there.

The Trailer Life Campground Directory showed General Sibley Park about four miles down the road but it listed their sites as 18 feet wide and 35 feet long, not big enough for our large motorhomes. Norm and Don drove the CR-V down to check the sites and found dozens of empty sites that were paved, very wide and 65 feet long. There was at least 100 feet between sites and the park was large and beautiful with miles of biking and walking paths. Trailer Life says they visit the campgrounds they rate but with mistakes totally wrong like that we know the raters have never been there.

North Dakota's State Capitol is unique in design being a 19-story, 241 feet high rise building of art deco design. We are used to touring traditional State Capitols and thought we would be disappointed touring a high rise, but were we surprised. The Capitol building is beautiful and we got a nice tour. The building was built in the early 1930's and occupied in 1934. The exterior is faced with Wisconsin black marble and Indiana limestone. The interior is tastefully decorated with Yellowstone Travertine (it looks like polished petrified wood), Belgian black marble, Tennessee marble, American walnut, California walnut, English oak, teak wood, prima vera, Honduras mahogany, laurel wood, rosewood, curly maple, chestnut, English quarter-sawed oak and bronze. The building has more usable space than any other capitol in the nation. We recommend you tour the North Dakota State Capitol and take a guided tour then walk around the beautiful 130-acre grounds looking at interesting trees, flowers, buildings and statues.

Next door the North Dakota Heritage Center houses the State Historical Society's diverse collections of artifacts and exhibits on the history of the state from early plains Indians to the present. We learned how badly the Indians were treated by white men and the hardships endured by early homesteaders. The museum is free and if you read all the signs and study the exhibits a tour of the museum will take about four hours. It is one of the more interesting state museums we have toured.

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is located on the Missouri River seven miles south of Mandan, North Dakota and has three distinct sections - On-A-Slant (Mandan) Village, Fort McKeen Infantry Post and Fort Abraham Lincoln Cavalry Post which includes General Custer's home. On a cold mid-fifties temperature morning in the middle of June, with winds blowing and occasional rain, wearing winter clothes and coats, we started our tour at the visitors center. There we saw exhibits depicting the lifestyle of Mandan Indians, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, fur trade, railroad and homesteading eras, and the arrival of the military.

Portions of the On-A-Slant Indian Village such as the log and earthen earthlodges used by the Mandan have been reconstructed on the site of the original village. It received its name from being built on a slope toward the Missouri River. The village was occupied by Mandan Indians from 1575 until 1781 when a smallpox epidemic brought by white fur traders forced the Mandans to move north. They were an agricultural tribe who grew corn, beans and squash along the riverbottom and hunted buffalo on the prairie. They were skilled traders selling grain, tobacco, pelts, tools and garden produce to other tribes. The village contained 85 round earthlodges and was only one of several villages along the Missouri River. At one time the Mandan's population rose to 12,000-15,000 people and after epidemics and wars with Indians and white men their number was reduced to 126. The last full-blooded Mandan died several years ago. Mandan women worked the gardens, cooked meals and built and owned the earthlodges. Mandan men hunted, raised tobacco, made war weapons to fight away hostile tribes and lived in the women's earthlodges. A Mandan woman in her eighties supervised reconstruction of the village since she had built four earthlodges herself. The Mandans were a peaceful and loving people and it is a shame what happened to them. More will be reported later on the Mandan. When Lewis and Clark camped near the village in 1804 they reported the village had been abandoned but they would spend the winter with the Mandan forty miles further north. We received an excellent guided tour of the village and learned much history of the Mandan.

On a bluff above the Mandan village is Fort McKeen Infantry Post. In 1872 an infantry post was established to protect surveyors and work crews on the Northern Pacific Railroad. The presence of cavalry was soon found to be necessary and in 1873 Fort Abraham Lincoln was constructed on a flat below the infantry and occupied by the 7th Cavalry with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in command. Custer (later promoted to General) and his wife Libby lived on the fort 2 1/2 years. In 1876 Custer and the 7th Cavalry rode out on their ill-famed campaign against Plains Indians in Montana and at Little Bighorn Custer and all of his men were killed. The Custer home has been reconstructed and we took an excellent and informative guided tour. Gloria entertained the tour group by playing an old piano.

We moved to Washburn, North Dakota and arrived in a driving rain storm much like the daily weather we've had during our month on Trail. The Missouri River of today is nothing like it was in 1804 when Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery worked their way up the river. They often could not determine the river's channel and ran aground on sandbars. Most of the river has been changed by a series of six dams, 2,000 miles of levees and it has been shortened by 127 miles. The river is only one-third as wide as it was in 1804 and has been re-routed by as much as two miles is some places. However some of the river near Washburn and Fort Mandan where the Corps spend the winter of 1804-1805 has remained the same as seen in the picture. The Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center in Washburn has excellent displays and exhibits on the Corps travels and their winter's stay in a nearby fort.

Fort Mandan, a small triangular fort, was constructed by the Corps from cottonwood trees along the river's bank. The location of the original fort has not been found but it is believed it is now under water. A reconstructed fort has been built a few miles downstream from the original. Lewis and Clark spent a severe winter in the fort mending clothes, repairing tools and weapons, and trading for food with the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians who lived across the river.

Fort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site located across the river from Fort Mandan presents an interesting study of 1800's trade between fur traders and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Indian tribes. In 1832 the Mandans built earthlodges on a bluff overlooking the river and in 1830-1831, the American Fur Company built Fort Clark, not a military fort but a trading post. Fur trappers and Indians alike brought pelts to the fort and traded them to the fur company for clothing, tools, cooking pots, weapons and other items. In 1837 the steamboat St. Peter docked at Fort Clark carrying passengers infected with smallpox and it spread to the Mandan village killing 90% of the inhabitants and 50% of the Mandan's neighbors. The Mandan tribe was reduced to 126 people. In 1862 Fort Clark was abandoned. Today there is nothing left of Fort Clark or the Indian villages except depressions in the landscape, but informative signs mark locations and give history. We found it interesting the Missouri River once flowed by Fort Clark but it now flows a mile away. From the bluff where the fort once stood we could easily see the old river valley.

A few miles up the river we found Knife River Indian Villages, a National Park Historic Site. At this Hidatsa village in 1804, French-Canadian trader Toussaint Charbonneau was living with his Shoshone wife Sakakawea (Sacagewea). Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau to travel with them as an interpreter, but Sakakawea proved to be much more valuable in negotiating treaties and trades with the western Indian tribes.

Montana and North Dakota have enough coal to supply power demands at the current rate for the next 1,000 years and the United States coal reserves contain 12 times more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. North Dakota generates 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, but uses only 8 billion kilowatt hours. Eight miles north of Washburn we found Falkirk Mining Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The North American Coal Corporation. The operation owns 44 square miles and we got an excellent two hour tour that took us into the guts of lignite coal mining. They operate two enormously large Dragline machines that weigh 13.5 million pounds each and are 215 feet high from ground to boom tip. They travel at a speed of 1/10 mph and are electrically driven by 13,000 horsepower motors using 25,000 volts. Click on the picture to the right for an enlarged picture and note the standard size trucks at the right base of the Dragline.

Kress coal trucks transport coal from the mining operations and the trucks hold 160 tons of coal and weigh 440,000 pounds loaded. (One Kress truck hauls enough coal in one load to heat the average North Dakota home for ten years.) Coal is bottom dumped into a hopper that can crush 4,000 tons an hour and it is conveyed to a silo that holds 15,000 tons until Coal Creek Generating Station located on-site needs the coal. Once all the mineable coal is removed from an area a fleet of reclamation equipment re-grades the land to the topography similar to what it was before the mining process began. When top soil is originally removed to get to the coal it is stored and spread on the restored land.

At Washburn we unhooked the water, electrical and sewer connections in rain and mud and drove to Williston in rain and extremely high winds the whole way. With 30-mph winds driving was difficult but the scenery was beautiful. (We have been on the Lewis and Clark Trail 36 days and it has rained 33 of those days. It is the middle of June but temperatures have been so cold we have worn sweat shirts and jackets the last eleven days to keep warm.)

There are three historic sites along the Missouri River near the North Dakota and Montana border - the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretative Center, Fort Buford State Historic Site and Fort Union Trading Post. The Confluence Center was recently opened where the Yellowstone River empties into the Missouri. Lewis and Clark camped at this site in 1805 while studying the two rivers trying to decide which one was the Missouri. The center has interesting exhibits and a 55-minute movie on the rivers and nearby Fort Buford. Before leaving we ate picnic lunches overlooking the two rivers.

Fort Buford was established in 1866 and eventually housed six companies of infantry and cavalry. The soldiers policed the international boundary, guarded railroad construction crews and provided escorts for steamers and wagon trains. In 1876 Custer and his men were killed in the Battle of Little Bighorn and in 1881 Sioux Chief Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford at the senior officer's home. The home, a barracks and other original buildings remain. Other Indian leaders who were detained as prisoners were Nez Perce Chief Joseph, Gall and Crow King. The fort was closed in 1881. We received a personal tour of the buildings and grounds.

A short distance down the road is reconstructed Fort Union Trading Post, a National Historic Site. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company controlled the fur trade on the Upper Missouri from the fort, near the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Beaver furs, buffalo hides and other furs were traded for goods with Assiniboin, Crow and Blackfeet Indians. The fort's inhabitants included Americans (including blacks), Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, Spaniards, Italians and several Indian tribes. With that mix interpreters were in demand. Many of the white men married Indian women and had children, but white women never lived in the fort. The man in charge of the post was called the Bourgeois and he lived in an elaborate house. In 1867 the fur trade was in decline and the fort was sold to Fort Buford for construction material.

We have decided to leave the Lewis and Clark Trail and venture where they did not go. Our next update will start with Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana.