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Final Destination
1. Tri-City Herald: Local http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/v-printer/story/7202150p-71...
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Final destination
This story was published Sunday, November 13th, 2005
By Nathan Isaacs, Herald staff writer
ASTORIA, Ore. -- "When are we going to get dry?" Erik James of Portland asked his father as his family walked out
from the cold, damp forest where Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery camped 200 years ago after reaching the
Pacific Ocean.
The 33-member military party, led by Capts. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, no doubt asked the same question as
the 10-year-old blond boy, who was trying to shake the rain from his clothes.
"It would be distressing to a feeling person to See our Situation at this time all wet and cold," Clark wrote in his journal
on Nov. 12, 1805.
While cargo ships and tour boats have replaced tribal canoes, and the Astoria-Megler Bridge now spans the Columbia
River, what hasn't changed in the 200 years since Lewis and Clark is the ever-present fall rain. As one local man said,
"It rains here only once. ... It starts in October and ends in May."
Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery set off in 1804 from St. Louis to chart the West, meet its people and to find a
navigable water route from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, if such a fabled waterway existed.
Along the way, the group met and traded with dozens of native tribes, shot a grizzly bear and was chased by other
grizzlies, straddled the headwaters of the Missouri River, crossed the Continental Divide, got lost in the Bitterroot
Mountains and paddled down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia Rivers, briefly stopping to explore the Mid-Columbia.
By the time the expedition reached the Pacific in November, the group was low on trade goods, hungry, miserably wet
and looking for a place to winter before returning home.
A Missouri-based group of reenactors has traveled the entire Lewis and Clark route, enduring many of the same
hardships. Mike Dotson of Monon, Ind., who portrays Pvt. Alexander Willard, said the constant rain has made many of
the reenactors as miserable as the men they portray.
It rained all but 12 of the 106 days the Corps of Discovery spent at Fort Clatsop.
Here's a sample from Clark's journal entries over a two-week period that showed how the rain affected him and the
party:
"Ocian in view! O! the joy," Clark wrote Nov. 7, 1805.
"Not withstanding the disagreeable time of the party for Several days past they are all Chearfull and full off anxiety to
See further into the ocian," he wrote two days later.
"Rained as usial all the evening, all wet and disagreeable Situated," was Clark's Nov. 14 journal entry.
"O! how horrible is the day" Clark wrote Nov. 22.
Rain was the forecast -- "as usial" -- this weekend as Astoria and other coastal communities in Oregon and Washington
kicked off Destination, The Pacific, one of 15 national events commemorating the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
Those brave enough, or wearing enough foul weather gear, could attend lectures by Lewis and Clark historians and
authors, watch a Lewis and Clark film festival, observe as archaeologists dug away at Fort Clatsop or try to trade with
the Lewis and Clark reenactors.
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