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Day 32 – Lewis and Clark
During our visit to St Louis we were staying in the town of St Charles. Although St Louis was the departure point for most of the 45 members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, Lewis himself joined them at St Charles. The town gave them an elaborate send off, and it lays claim to the actual start of the expedition.
In 2003 a celebration of the expedition’s bicentennial was held in St Charles. A permanent museum was built, along with replicas of the keelboat and pirogues used on the expedition. We visited this museum and the quaint town of St Charles on October 17, a free day on our tour.
A bronze sculpture of William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis’s Newfoundland, Seaman, in the riverfront park that houses the museum in St CharlesThe Lewis and Clark Boathouse and Museum on the Missouri riverfront in St Charles, Missouri Display of some of the flora and fauna the Corps of Discovery would have encountered on their expedition Recreation of a campsite as it might have looked during the expedition An actual 19th century dugout canoe, made of an Osage Orange log. The Corps of Discovery would have used boats like this on the expedition. A tug pushing a barge up the Missouri River just outside the museum’s grounds. The expedition began on the Missouri and ended at the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific, a year and a half later. The return trip was made in 9 months!The Missouri waterfront in St Charles. Old railroad station in St Charles, now a part of the city’s waterfront park. Bridge crossing the Missouri upstream, very near the RV park where we were staying. The center of St Charles is a museum itself! Most of the original old buildings have been preserved, either as actual museums, or as shops or homes. The streets and sidewalks are all brick. It is lovely to walk through. Given the time of year, there was quite a bit of Halloween tomfoolery on display. Gracie’s shadow cracked me up in this photo
Sweet town, St. Charles! Brings to life the period covered in my current read: The Pioneers, by David McCullough – which is about settling the Ohio River, which happened during the Western Expansion.
Wanda Free 
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