Meandering In My RV: Great Falls Montana sights

Monday, July 25, 2011

Great Falls Montana sights

Rainbow falls and dam

Black Eagle falls and dam

On Sunday we headed south from our campground in Fort Benton, MT. We wanted to see the 5 water falls that the Corps of Discovery had to portage around including The Great Falls. We succeeded in seeing 3 of the 5. One is now under water due to the building of dams for hydro-electric power plants and the other, well, we just blew it and missed it. All 3 of the ones we saw were "messed up" in our opinion because they have dams just above them holding back water. Totally messes up the flow, beauty and whole imagination of what Lewis and Clark saw. Oh well. In the pictures try to visualize the falls without the dam (I know, it's hard). Note: click on pictures for bigger images and use the browser back button to return to the blog.

Giant Springs

Great Falls

Giant Springs - smallest river in world

We also went to Giant Springs. This is a huge spring flowing right next to, and into, the Missouri River. It flows so much water that they classify the water coming out of it as a river and thus that river is the shortest river in the world. See the picture to the right to see why.

Next we went to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. It was a museum dedicated to the journey of the Corps of Discovery. It was very well done and very informative.

Buffalo jump ridge from below

Next we went to the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park. This is all about seeing a cliff and hearing the story about how prehistoric Native Americans would chase Buffalo over a cliff to kill them. The pamphlets talked about piles of Buffalo bones 15 feet deep at the bottom of the cliff. This I wanted to see. Well, no such luck. The bones are all covered with top soil now so you take their word for it and just look at the cliff and use your imagination. At the top of the hill there is a huge prairie dog town - fun to watch.