Day 12-Big Lake, MO to Peru, NE (50/545 miles)

The first 13 miles today I experienced something I have not experienced yet on this tour - a modest tailwind!!  It was wonderful! This must be what it feels like to ride an E-bike!  That changed from a tailwind to a crosswind when I turned to the north late this morning. Still, it was a welcome relief from the headwinds I have battled every day of this trip so far.

Lewis and Clark experienced almost no tailwinds to this point in their journey, which took them until early July to complete without the benefit of much help from tailwind. The crew on the keelboat was having to move the heavy boat upstream largely with the use of poles and oars.  They had with them to horses that would help man on the shores pull the key about when it became snagged in the mud and debris that tended to collect in the shallow waters on the sides of the river.

It was exhausting work, and as spring change the summer, the core of discovery had to take frequent breaks and rest days to recover from fatigue.

I think the Corps of Discovery must have held out the same kind of hope that I currently do for some tailwind. Over the past few days I have been riding along a bend in the river and watched as the flow of the river has changed from being predominantly west to east to being predominantly north to south.  

As they went through this bend, the Corps of Discovery took time to construct a new mast from a cottonwood tree.  An apparently sanguine Captain Clark specifically commented in his journal upon how beautiful the new mast was, noting how its color changed to a gorgeous red.

At this point in the journey, Clark was making copious notes in his journal about his observations.  This is fortunate because Lewis, the more literate and articulate of the two, wrote virtually nothing.  

No one is sure exactly why Lewis wasn't writing much during the spring and summer of 1804. Some historians have speculated that his writings from that period were lost. It is true that upstream from here there was an incident in which the keelboat on which the journals were kept nearly capsized.

More historians, however, attribute Lewis's lack of writing during this and other periods to periodic bouts with depression. It is known that his father suffered from depression and Jefferson was aware that Lewis also suffered from depression.

So what was Lewis doing around this. In the journey? Well, among other things, we know from what Clark wrote that he was continuing to climb the river bluffs notwithstanding his brush with death on the river bluffs a month earlier.

I made a side trip to a point in the river bluffs overlooking Fort Leavenworth.. This photo was taken in the general area in which we know that Lewis was exploring the bluffs.  This is likely similar to what Lewis saw from the tops of the bluffs in this region.

 

Traveling on the Glacial Hills Scenic Byway in Kansas and on remote roads and the Steamboat Trace trail in Nebraska the past couple of days has given me an opportunity to get a close look at that beautiful and fertile prairies of this region that so impressed Lewis and Clark.

 

There is a very old saying that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Mississippi River without ever setting foot on the ground simply by jumping from tree to tree.  That same squirrel would be earthbound in Kansas and Nebraska!