Day 21 -- Nebraska City to Papillion, Nebraska -- 50 Miles

No rain last night, but it sure was cold and gloomy when we woke up this morning. The weather really has been a challenge on this trip as it's been almost continually gloomy and overcast. Since I'm a person who gauges the success of a sojourn like this on the photographs that I'm able to capture of important and exciting landmarks, the lack of sunny skies has definitely had a negative effect on my photography.

Okay, now that's off my chest, I'll tell you about today. Our first port of call this morning after leaving camp was the beautiful new Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Museum located just a quarter mile down the road from our camp in Nebraska City. It was so close, that had warmer temperatures prevailed, we had planned on walking the distance after breakfast and walking back to pick up the rig. As it was, we drove over there and parked in the empty parking lot, confident that the facility opened at 9:00 a.m. Turned out it begins opening at 9:00 a.m. this coming weekend. We were just a couple of days early. But no matter, we just spent the time pouring over maps in an effort to decide on our next objective.

Once inside the museum we were immediately lost in the world of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as they pursued their assignment to explore America's newly-acquired 800,000 acres of land President Thomas Jefferson had purchased from Napoleon of France. The new territory, known now as the Louisiana Purchase, would double the size of the existing United States.

Initially the co-captains recruited over fifty men to accompany them on what turned out to be a scientific as well as fact-finding expedition, and christened the group the Corps of Discovery. In 1803 they set out with one large keel boat and two smaller, canoe-style boats called parogues to ascend the rushing current of the Missouri River to its headwaters. The three boats used sail power whenever feasible, but when no wind was present the voyagers were compelled to row, pole, or pull the boats with ropes as groups of men, rope in hand, walked along the shore.

The Corps of Discovery spent the winter of 1804/1805 with the Mandan Tribe located in what is now North Dakota. They built shelters within a Fort structure to aid in their survival in the cold temperatures. In April, when warmth had returned to the upper reaches of the Missouri, they sent the large keel boat back since its draft was too deep for the further progress upstream. Aboard was all the scientific specimens, maps, and written descriptions of what the Corps had encountered to that point.

It was at Fort Mandan that the Corps added two new crew members to the group, one who would forever be renowned as the only female member of the expedition. Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian, was married to Toussaint Charbonneau, a part French, part Native American, and both accompanied the Corps along with their brand new baby, Jean Batiste. The inclusion of the Charbonneau family was a stroke of luck for the explorers as the Shoshones would later welcome the Corps into their midst and provide them with horses once it was no longer feasible for them to travel by boat.

By November of 1804 the explorers had traveled all the way from Fort Mandan to the shores of the Pacific. And other then the one crew member who had died early in the adventure, perhaps from appendicitis, no Corps of Discovery members had died, though at one point while traveling through the Rocky Mountains in deep snow they had been reduced to eating their young horses and even candle wax.

The trip back from the Pacific Ocean to St. Louis, Missouri was accomplished in much less time. Though they had to build boats when they had once again reached the upper headwaters of the Missouri, the voyage home was without incident. The explorers returned home to great acclaim in September of 1806.

This account is vastly oversimplified, of course, but there are literally hundreds of books on this subject, one of which you should watch for on Ebay and read. Lewis and Clark accomplished through hard work, intelligence, attention to detail, and perseverance a nearly impossible task, that of opening up the west for the future expansion of a new and growing country. The co-captains had taken 31 men all the way to the Pacific and back, and all lived to tell about it (a number of men had returned with the keel boat from Fort Mandan and the Charbonneaus stayed with Sacagawea's people, the Shonshone).

All the displays at the Lewis and Clark Trail Museum were just excellently done. Three floors of exhibits kept our attention for almost two hours. They had some fantastic taxidermy, including a grizzly bear, a buffalo, and a number of smaller animals. They had an extensive display on the fish encountered by the Corps of Discovery, as well as Meriwether Lewis' notes and drawings as each was discovered. They also had an extensive set of displays on life-sized and miniature replicas of the Corps' various boats, fifty-five in all, that started the voyage or were crafted along the way.

One of my favorite displays was a full-sized keel boat replica that sported an integrated, interactive computer screen (photo above) that showed your progress on the Missouri as you steered between a group of snags and picked up some supplies. All you had to do was grasp the tiller and steer. I didn't do too well as I kept hitting the snag.

My favorite "find" of the morning was a book entitled, "Feasting and Fasting with Lewis & Clark," "A Food and Social History of the Early 1800s." Everything from food preservation to shopping in St. Louis in 1803 caught my eye as I paged through. Looks like it's going to be a great read and future reference.

I also had a lucky break while at the museum. I noticed a brochure for the "Freighters' Museum" that was located in Nebraska City. That really got my attention since the reason we're in this part of the country at all is so I can research my second great grandfather who was a freighter in 1850 in the northern-most tip of Missouri. I hurried to ask the Lewis and Clark Museum's desk clerk about the Freighters' Museum.

"Well," he said. "I can show you where it is, but it doesn't open for the season until this weekend."

I'm sure my smile faded at that point.

"Wait a minute," the clerk said, after seeing my disappointment, "sometimes the docent there will let you make an appointment and will meet you there even though the museum is not officially open. I'll make a call and find out for you."

"Outstanding," I said, and mentally crossed my fingers.

The clerk immediately got the Freighters' Museum docent on the phone and after some back and forth the docent agreed to meet us at the museum at 1:00 p.m., a comfortable time that would allow us to navigate to the place and then have lunch in the parking lot before showing up for our tour.

And that's exactly how it turned out. Using the map from the Lewis and Clark Museum, we easily found our way to the Freighters' Museum, located a nice level church basketball court on which to park the rig, had lunch, and were able to present ourselves at the front door precisely on time. A neatly-dressed man in his mid eighties met us at the door, and then for the next two hours conducted us on a guided tour of the museum's two floors.

The house in which the Freighters' Museum is located was originally owned by the U.S. Army, but later was purchased by the famous freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell. You might remember those names from that grand experiment in mail delivery called the Pony Express. Well, those entrepreneurial gentlemen were also heavily involved with overland freighting for many years, and ran groups of wagons from the Missouri River out to military forts along the overland trail, even as far away as the Mormon settlement of Salt Lake City.

I was really hoping that the Freighters' Museum would provide an opportunity to pick up some great information, maybe a book or two on the subject of early freighting. But when we toured the office where the books were kept, only one book was available on the subject. Unfortunately, I already have that one book, actually two copies since I need one to remain in pristine condition and I need one to mark up. The book is entitled: "From the Missouri to the Great Salt Lake : An Account of Overland Freighting". This book has a wealth of information on the subject, and indeed the docent told us he considered the book his "Bible" on freighting topics.

So I came away disappointed that I had not encountered additional information on freighting in the 19th century, but the two hours that we spent with Air Force vet, Sociology/Anthropology professor, ordained minister, and docent extraordinaire, Larry Falk, turned out to be the highlight of our day. His enthusiasm was infectious as he read to us, guided us, informed us, educated us, and brightened our day even as the gloomy skies hovered overhead. Well done, Larry. We loved it.

And so here we are, gone from Nebraska City, back over the bridge to Iowa Route 29, up I29 to the vicinity of Omaha, and then over a convenient bridge to Pappillion, Nebraska. Here we found a somewhat level spot in a state campground that is meager in cost, but light on amenities. We have no water or sewer connection, though the electricity seems to be flowing adequately enough. We do have a nice asphalt parking space, a congenial park host, and our little campsite is tucked in among rolling hills and beautiful trees. Tomorrow we're headed just a bit north from here to explore the last place in the then United States where the Mormon tribes lived before immigrating to the Salt Lake Valley. My three times great grandfather and much of his family lived there after leaving Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846, and before moving west in 1849. Not sure what we're going to find, but we've heard reports that the Mormons in Winter Quarters, Nebraska really know how to do a museum right. So until then, we wish you the best of Happy Travels.