So over thunderstorms... Really.

I've never met a Meteorologist that doesn't have a few favorite cloud types.  Also... all of them have included in their top five favorite clouds the mammatus cloud and the cumulonimbus.  Always party favs at meteorology swaray for good reason, they are really really interesting feats of atmospheric gymnastics!     

(Click here if you are not familiar with the awesomeness of mammatus clouds.  I'll assume you are all  familiar with Cumulonimbus...)

This is not the storm in this story, but here you can see the mammatus clouds blowing off in the anvil top with the cumulonimbus in the bottom right of the picture.

Maybe it is a joke of the universe but I have been getting creamed by thunderstorms the last few weeks.

I'll tell you the story of one that hit me just west of Washburn, North Dakota.

I knew there were a lot of storms out this day... as it is pretty much the great plains and you can see them coming.  I was below the Garrison Dam by a day and was still looking for my rudder.  Heston was rowing and it had been raining on and off all day.  I kept looking back at a dark grey section of the horizon hoping that all the storms would just go around me.

I looked up early afternoon and over top of me was an amazing display of mammatus clouds.  Normally this would make me happy and I would text pictures of the clouds to other weather nerds… that day, I just made a frowny face at them.  They didn’t take the hint.

Normally you will find the mammatus clouds blown directly downwind of the storm.  The upper level winds being the steering winds for the weather.   (Surface winds don’t count for bubkiss about whether you are going to be hit by a storm or not.)

Anyways, I looked up and there were beautiful mammatus overhead.  There were a lot of low clouds in the distance so I couldn’t see the associate storm, but I knew it was out there.  Just by coincidence, this was also as I was passing the now likely found site of Fort Mandan.  I didn’t quite have good coordinates and I planned to come back with John so I kept cruising and hoping the weather would go away.

Late afternoon I  saw one single big hail stone drop about ten feet from the boat.  

PLOOP!

Like a kid threw a rock.

I looked back at where I thought the storm would come from and nothing but nebulous grey clouds.  At this point, Mr Heston and I are running full tilt!  I have the throttle set for max blast and I am trying to get to Washburn North Dakota.  It is all river here and also mostly plains so I sort of wanted to park the boat at somewhere and hide maybe in a building or something. I don’t really know why I was trying to get to Washburn, but I was. 

It had been maybe ten minutes since I had looked behind me… when I turned around and…

HOLY JESUS! 

It was the MOTHER of all shelf clouds!!!  (Shelf cloud = The lower leading edge of a super cell thunderstorm)

I am not exaggerating when I say it looked like it was the vacuum cleaner of god sucking up the earth into oblivion! 

I immediately looked ahead for somewhere to stash the boat and hid. Really not much.  As Dorthy will tell you, the great plains are a terrible place to hid from a storm.  Futilely I twist the throttle again against the stop hopping for just a little more speed.

I could see an island about a quarter mile ahead… It looked like I could hide there… nope… I’ll never make it… 

I spot a huge pile of rocks along the right side of the river.  It looked like they had originally been placed there to try and prevent the bank from being eroded by the river, but the river had just worked its way behind the rocks and it had eroded a sort of cove behind the rocks.  That’s it!  No other options… any port in a storm as they say, and this port is a little eroded spot behind some rocks.  

I keep the throttle wide open and aim the boat for the little spot of sand behind the rocks.  My intention is to slam the boat as far up into the sand as I can then tie it to something.

That part went great!  At full speed!!! (Basically a power walk speed) I slam the Mermaid right into that sand and cut the engine.  Immediately I hop out and tug as hard as I can to pull the boat as far in as possible.  I had apparently done a good job with my Bangladeshi ship breaker parking job as I couldn’t move it any farther than it was already.

Next order of business was to tie it to something.  Being the great plains still, there was a serious lack of stuff to tie anything to so I pulled the anchor out and wedged it into the rocks that I had mentioned earlier.  They sort of formed a rock pile about 40 feet long that was parallel with the river and the cove was behind it.

I put everything I cared about in my backpack put that in a garbage bag stuffed that into the rocks.  I then put everything else I wanted to keep dry in a big rubber-made container.  

I was as ready as I could be so I went up on top of the rock pile to watch the storm come. I only stood there for a few minutes when the wind became too ridiculous and I went down and hid in the rocks with the anchor and backpack.  All things considered, it actually was about ideal!  Most of the boat was protected by the rocks from the wind and waves, I was able to get down into the rocks incase of a tornado.  

(Oh yea... this was a text book looking tornado producing thunderstorm.  I started to assume that once I was passed the precipitation, I would be looking at a wall cloud with a tornado hanging down.)

So there I am, crouched into the rocks the wind absolutely blasting over the top of the rock pile.  It was like driving in a convertible on the highway in the rain.  When the rain did finally start, it was all blowing right over me!  Not to say I was totally dry, but I could look up and see the sheets of rain blowing right over top of me!

The masts on the boat were boinging around in the wind like car antenna in the the carwash and I was becoming less and less sure of my furling job on the sail… but it seemed to be holding.  

Slowly I realized that the water was leaving the cove!  The wind was actually blowing the water out of the cove entirely!  The boat was now resting on the dry sand.  Probably it would come back when the wind stopped right? If not, how was I going to get the boat back to the water?  Either way, that was a problem for future Nick, not now Nick.  

Suddenly problem solved…  The wind was now blowing the boat across the waterless sand back toward the river! The wind had blown the boat about twenty feet and it was sliding back into the water when I finally figured out how to get a hold of the anchor line and stop it. I wrestled it back in enough that the bow was at least resting on sand again. I snugged up the line as tight as I could, and got back into my hiding spot.  

The river didn’t exist anymore.  The wind was so ferocious that there was no water there was no sky… as I looked at the river, it was a wall of opaque white about 60 feet high.  I am sure it was a combination of waves, surf, foam, blowoff and rain, but in practicality it was just a wall of white.  If the boat had gotten out into that, I am sure best case scenario it would be that I pulled back a frayed rope end.  

It was horrendous!  (Also as I found out later, that same storm went on to destroy the town of Killdear, North Dakota.)  

Again, it all just ended up being a feat of endurance... just sitting there and taking it... waiting for the pain to be over.

Eventually, the storm went through.  I bailed enough water out of the boat so it wasn’t completely unstable and got back underway.  The lid to the rubber made container with all the stuff I wanted to keep dry was long gone and the container was now serving as a sort of toilet bowl with all my favorite keep dry items sloshing around in it.

This day, pretty much the only thing I had managed to keep dry was my computer.  Other than that, everything was completely soaked.

For the rest of the evening, the sky was spiderwebbed with lighting from horizon to horizon!  It was the most eery lightning I have ever seen.  So much static electricity.  Like an earth sized Jacob’s ladder.  The sky cracked continuously instead of rumble or clapped…. maybe buzzed with electricity.  You could just feel it in the air.

I did make it to Washburn ND that night, and slept on land. 

I did get hit by another thunderstorm the next day, but it was just a regular air mass thunderstorm… and in caparison it was like a butterfly kiss!  But serioulsy… so so so so over thunderstorms!

Here rudder rudder rudder....

Ok.  So where was I!?!

Oh yea.  So I got back to my boat and my rudder was missing!

The best that I can tell, I beached the bow of the boat against the river bank.  Then the dam closed the gates and the water level went down.  As it did, the bow stayed put and the back of the boat went down with the river.  The first thing to touch would be the rudder.  The upward pressure as it sank into the river bottom popped it out of its pins then it flopped over into the water.  When the water came back up, it just floated away.  

SUPER BUMMER!

Well, with the main control surface of my craft gone, I had to improvise.  I lashed an extra oar to the stern post.  An old whale boat trick... and to be honest... should probably stay with whale boats.  If i needed to spin the boat to put a harpooner next to the sperm whale, it would work great but for holding a steady course or angle to the wind it is pretty awkward.  

Worst case scenario the rudder is 125 miles down stream.  That is assuming 24 hours at about 5-6 miles an hour current.  Best case, it is hung up on a snag a quarter mile down stream.  Actually, that seems most likely!  I can hardly eat a can of soup before the river tries to throw me into a snag or the bank.  It is probably the same for the rudder!  I'll have it back in no time!

I hand the oars to Mr Heston, loosen the stop on the motor so I can swivel it by hand to use it to steer, then crank him up.  I start systematically searching the banks figuring the rudder couldn't have gotten far.  

Fast forward:  TWO DAYS Later:

So many thunderstorms... No rudder.

I’ll get back to the thunderstorms in a minute but for now, just consider I am motoring into Bismarck ND from the north and have been ravaged for days by thunderstorms.  I am cold and wet, everything I own is wet… well, I did manage to keep a few things like the oatmeal dry, but that is about it.  

I figure I’ll get into Bismarck, spend the night in a motel to dry out, then find a hardware store and talk the manager into letting me build a new rudder behind his store. 

Instead, what do I see as I come around the bend just north of town… A TALL SHIP!

Yea, you read that right!  I see a huge tall ship right on the river bank!  Well it is actually a house, but made to look like a tall ship.  On the forecastle of the ship/house there is a guy.  As I am blowing down the river he shouts to me.  “Where’d you start from?”

I answer and he shouted something else back to me.  I couldn’t hear so I turned around and came up to his dock to continue our conversation.  We start talking for a few minutes about the weather, he asks about the boat etc. 

Well, in the course of this conversation it comes out that that I will have to build a new rudder.  He offers for me to borrow his tools tomorrow and build it there!  He likes that kind of project anyways and would be happy to help!

Pulling in to Rollie and Corky's dock.

Yep... shits all wet... and no rudder.

The next morning Rollie picks me up from the motel where I have sort of dried out to the point of being only mostly damp and we proceed to build the rudder at his house.  As it turns out he has spent his whole life running up and down the river, restores old cars, and has sort of a side gig of buying rust free cars from the desert and bringing them up north to sell where they have all disappeared.  

Couldn't have lucked out any better!

Here is the new rudder we built!

Due to glue drying, and sealing the wood… it takes two days to finish the rudder to the point it will survive the next few months in the water.  So for these few days, Rollie and Corky take me in, let me turn their yard into a huge drying rack for everything I own.

My stuff drying all over the place. (Also, inside the buildings are a few awesome old cars!)

Bests of all!  I got to sail their house around the river for a while!  

ARRRrrrrgggg!  

"You're gonna need a bigger boat!"

More sailing through cowboy country!

So with a few days of perfect wind, (See previous post) I make my way down to the Garrison Dam.  As I am almost at the marina, the largest pontoon boat I have ever seen pulls me over and after a few minutes of questions about what I am up to they ask me over for dinner!  Great!, because at this point my stove has been broken for about a week and a half so I haven’t eaten anything hot in that long!  (This pontoon boat was so big it had a bridge on it!)  Anyways, disappointingly they no-showed so I just spent the night in the hammock in the harbor with plans to figure out how to get below the dam the next day.  

The next morning comes and I meet a guy named Mike Quinn. He is also a sailor of cowboy country though with a much bigger sailboat. I am sure he could win a Hemingway look alike contest if he ever found himself in Key West. Within minutes of talking to him… using the shock and awe method of asking for favors, he has borrowed a passerby’s full size sailboat trailer, borrowed another passerby’s pickup truck, and we are watching for trees and power lines as the whole thing is on it’s way down the backside of the dam without even taking down the masts!  

PLOOOOP!  Into the river again!  Couldn’t be easier!

Mike Quinn, picture stolen from GEARJUNKIE

With all my problems solved for the day, Mike asks if I would like to go sailing with him.  

Of course!

Next thing you know, we are back out on the reservoir sailing along… same wind, but whole different feeling about it!  At probably about a knot or so faster that I could get for the same wind, we glide through the waves and wind smooth as can be!  Well, smooth like standing on the side of the seats and wetting the railings… but none of the white knuckle peril I feel in my boat.  

Lot of discussions about putting tell-tails on your sails.  This progresses to discussions about women, politics, more sailing… Either way, as I remember it, we pretty much solved all the worlds problems in a few hours of talking while sailing!  

HERE IS HIS BLOG... Read it to about guess how we solved things.

With the world’s problems solved we headed back into the harbor for whiskey cokes!  Mike calls his wife Sissy to come pick us up… or at least me up as he is only there on his pretty much one seater motorcycle.  

Two dudes on a motorcycle, hey, we have all been there… two dudes on a one seat motorcycle, well, like I said we called Sissy.

Just as Sissy arrives, who else should walk onto this same dock in the middle of North Dakota but Melissa and Mark Sprague and family!  

So after a few “Holy shit, what the hell are you doing heres!?!?!”  You can imagine that we were surprised we could even recognize each other after what, ten years?  I look like the castaway she is back flying Hueys, and neither one of us was expecting or looking for each other.  We make plans to hang out the next day and I head home with the Quinn’s.

Well, it turns out there were a few problems Mike and I hadn’t gotten to, but luckily Sissy and I solved them on the back porch with beer.

The next morning Mike and I go to Knife River Indian Village.  Another NPS run spot, and extremely well done.  Being kind of slow at nine in the morning on a weekday, the park ranger David Carr gave us a personal tour.  Extremely knowledgeable and excellent at explaining things.  A little soft spoken so my best advice is to just let him talk.  One interesting thing he mentioned was, that not only was this Sakakawea’s home village… also, John Yunker’s family farm is almost right across the river!  Mr Carr was familiar with Yunker’s site and though never having been there in person, thought that from what has been described, Yunker’s probably has found the original Ft Mandan!

Mike dropped me off at the Sprague’s campsite and we spent a few hours catching up!  This was the usual Air Force checking in about where everyone is at these days.  Chances are, if you know both of us, we talked about what you are up to now.  

They dropped me back at the boat where I discovered my rudder was missing!?!?

Well SHIT!  I really needed that rudder!

Sailing through Cowboy Country!

Lets resume after I left the little cove of the big fish… 

The next day the wind was perfect… well perfect direction anyways. I am starting to conclude that it is never possible to have the right amount of wind or the right amount of sail up.  So the day started off with not quite enough wind to make me feel happy, but I was sailing along easily at about three knots.  Not to bad for just sitting there.  I didn’t even hope for more wind. REALLY I didn't!!  I am now super happy with a three-knot-all-day day! 

Slowly though, it started blowing harder and harder.  

The way the progression usually works is you start off in the morning with just enough breaths of air that you can tell which direction it is going to blow.  Then by about 9 or so it is blowing hard enough that you are coasting along at about 2.5 knots. Just enough so that you wish it would blow a little more.

Then around 11 O’clock it is perfect!  The wind is blowing you along at a nice steady 5 knots.  Very comfortable.  No strain on anything.  Then after usually only about ten perfect minutes… you realize shit is getting real.  You start hitting 6 knots regularly… sometimes the boat just starts to come up on plane… then settles back in.  The speed is so much fun that you decide to push it a little bit… but you do start to wish that you had some reef points in this sail or maybe you had a smaller non-shredded sail. You start getting bolder and thinking you can handle it! 

Maybe you get bold enough to reply to a text message or something as you are sailing… or take a video.

Just about then you realize you are going way to fast! The wind is blasting you along, and now the waves are up big enough that occasionally your rudder whiffs in the air because the back end of the boat has come out of the water as you crest a wave.  This gets your attention… and you have a little pucker in your ass that you should do something before it gets out of hand!  I mean something besides push the rudder down farther so you can steer through bigger waves.

(I have now learned to heed this little pucker feeling.  If you don’t, suddenly, you will realize you have fucked yourself!)

It is like if you have ever tried to ride a skateboard down a really steep hill.  At first it is fine.  Then you get faster… still OK… then faster… now it’s exciting!  Suddenly you are overcome by the feeling you are going too fast to stop, too fast to turn, and way too fast to jump off! 

Well it is the same in the boat.  You now can’t abandon the tiller to bring down the sail, because it will flop over and bring you broadside to the waves before you  can get it in, and then you have a damn good chance of getting swamped.  You can’t turn into the wind to pull them down for the same reason.  You've now just skate boarded past where you have the talent to handle… like a cold chill down your back, your whole body knows it!  You figure your best bet is to steer well and it should all be fine!  Also, look what great time you are making!

Then you pass the second chill down the back… You can’t stay this lucky for this long and steer this boat this well!  It is madness! At this point, you have no choice, you need to get that sail in!  You get smarter in this situation… and think of releasing the whole sheet tackle!  

NOW you are literally sheets to the wind!  The sail flapping around so angrily!   At least now you aren’t being pulled around and over!  

Your only problem now is to scamper up the length of the boat as it is riding up and down these obnoxiously sized waves to douse the sail and secure it at least well enough that it won’t surprise unfurl and set you sailing again.  This is like if you put a balance beam on a giant trampoline full of fat bullies trying to get you to fall as you practice tying your shoe when your shoe laces are just a little to short! 

Great! Sails are finally in!  Time for some bare pole sailing again!  This seems like a great idea… but then you kind of remember that time of Ft Peck Lake that handed you your ass and think I could be a reasonable person and put into a protected cove about now.  You look at the time and it is only about 1:30 in the afternoon.  Man, it could get a hell of a lot windier out here before evening.  

Pretty much every time now, I make the good decision to put in somewhere and stand on shore and watch the white caps…. thinking I could probably have been fine…

Either way… still uploading!  So there is that! 

People are great!

A few miles past Ft Union and the confluence  of the Missouri and Yellowstone I look over… and what do I see but?!?!

Holy smokes… Can it be?  Another man out here floating the river in his home made seemingly dog themed sail boat drinking coffee?

In fact that is exactly what it was!

This is John Yunkers.  After we spotted each other, we of course tied our boats together and talked for a while.  A few hours in fact.  

We talked about just about everything under the sun. The river, god, life, women, dogs, dams… and finally Lewis and Clark!

The Lewis and Clark conversation started like this:

John: “So, are you familiar at all with the Lewis and Clark, their journals?

Me: “Fairly familiar… I have read Courage Undaunted, but I have found the journals themselves kind of thick to read.”

John: Ah yes yes… so you are familiar with Fort Mandan?

Me:  “You mean the lost-to-history Corp of Discovery camp of the 1804/1805 winter… searched for and supposedly never to be found, destroyed by the river or flooded by the dam?  That Fort Mandan?

John: “Yes, yes… I found it!”

Now as any Lewis and Clark buff will know, that is a hell of a statement to make.  It is sort of the L&C equivalent of saying to a Greek Archaeology buff… “I found Atlantis!” or to a treasure hunter, “I found El Dorado and it is in my yard!”

Obviously this brought about another few hours of our boats tied together drifting down the river, only being interrupted once by an old train bridge that attempted to dismast “Grace,” (John’s boat.) 

Leading up to the bicentennial of the L&C expedition 2003 - 2006ish there was a lot of effort put into the finding of Fort Mandan.  Even NASA was aiding in the search with some of their remote sensing capabilities.  Still nothing. 

And it was assumed lost forever.  Most likely destroyed by the river.

Then in 2011, the Missouri River flooded big despite the Army Corp of Engineers best efforts for the first time in many years.  Fort Peck dam washed out it’s spillway (which is still under reconstruction), The old Fort Union from my previous post was for the first time next to the water in sixty years, and… John Yunker’s grandfather’s farm which is just downstream of the Garison dam was also flooded!

John has been a L&C buff for many years… and the fact that most academic works put the probable location of the Fort Mandan somewhere on his grandfather’s farm only fed that interest.  As he was looking along the sand bars for some evidence of the destroyed fort… something like a broken pipe or a button or something… he started thinking about a depression that formed shortly after the floor in 2011 receded. 

Already being very familiar with the dimensions and it’s features… he started measuring off this depression.  It fit almost exactly the dimensions of the fort as it is described in the journals!

A hell of a good start for sure!  So, it’s in the right place, has the right dimensions… John decides to check for any additional evidence… He digs a small test hole at the edge of the depression… and immediately hits a charred beam. (The fort was burned down after the expedition left!)

So… right spot, right size and shape down to the foot, and materially exactly what it should be!  A pretty solid argument so far.  

We exchange information with plans to meet together at the now seemingly found Fort Mandan down the river. Hoist sails again and slowly go our separate way… or at least separate speeds.  

BREAK BREAK.

It is the 3rd of July… I have heard about a the campground in Tobacco Garden Bay being a good place to stop.

Supposedly they have a restaurant and showers.  I haven’t had a shower (legit with city clean water since Great Falls Montana, though I have jumped in the water a few times.  As far as I can tell I am clean, but the thought of a shower is appealing.  My supplies are getting a little low as well so I decide to push for there.

As I am sailing up the bay toward the campground I feel like I am entering some sort of civil war reenactment!  Rockets, explosions, bangs fires smoke…. The place is absolute madness!  I had mostly forgotten that it was the 4th of July weekend and that all camp grounds are going to be completely unchained! I am looking at the shore at the dogs, kids, fireworks, explosions, wall to wall tents and RV’s… Campers, beer…. WOW

I have basically been by myself for the last week and a half, and for most of that time I couldn’t even see anything man made from horizon to horizon.  This whole scene is a bit overwhelming! My new plans are to go eat, pick up what I can, then continue to a bay down the lake and sleep by myself in the boat as usual… skipping this madness!

I get into the little cove that the camp grounds are built on about nine that night After cleaning up the boat and finding my way around I make it to the restaurant/store about nine thirty.  It is definitely closed… just as I turn around to leave, a woman coming out of the closed building looks at me and says, “Are you a paddler?”

“Ummm… yes… sort of.  I am rowing and sailing but yes.”

It seems people that are floating the entire river have a look about them… I suppose if you have been on the river since the middle of Montana and now find yourself in North Dakota… that might be the case.  Even with all this madness, she looked at me for less than a second and knew what I was up to.

This was Peg! Owner and operator of this campground… and Mother to all journeying the river!  Before I can do or say anything more, she set me down at a picnic table for a moment to attend to some madness rolling by… then re-opens the store to let me in.

Apparently there is sort of a loose organization of people along the river keeping track of all of us fools making this trip.  She had already known there were a few of us leaking onto the beginning of Lake Sakakawae and was even expecting one or some of us to arrive within a day or so.  She gave me the shower code, hooked me up with a beer, and put me in a place right in front of my boat!

Peg has got to be one of the nicest and most generous people I have ever met!  If any other paddlers read this… a stop at Tobacco Garden is worth the trip up the bay!

After breakfast, before the camp Parade got started, I sailed right back out of the bay.  The winds were perfect and I made it all the way to New Town that day. 

Break Break.

I got into New Town and landed at the New Town Marina.  It seemed walking distance from the town itself and I still needed supplies.  Also, I wanted to upload some of my posts so I was looking to find some internet.  When you have a whole wad of posts and pictures to upload it never quite goes as fast as you would hope… so rather than camp my crazy hobo looking self in coffee shop that may or may not exist.  I decided to walk over the bridge and get a room for two nights at the 4Bears Casino.  This will give me all of tomorrow for uploading and other internet work I need to attend to.

Just south of the casino is what appears to be a commons for the three tribes living on the Fort Berthold Reservation.  (The three tribes of Ft Berthold are the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.)   Now being the actual 4th of July, it was even more madness than the previous campground!  Campers, fireworks, explosions, kids, 4-wheelers. WHAAAA!!!!!…  All still overwhelming… Also, being the reservation, people’s personal fireworks were serious serious serious artillery! After walking around under the raining burning confetti for a while I had had enough and went in to look around the casino.  

The next day, I was working my way through my list of stuff to do on the internet.  One of which was find the sat photo of Fort Mandan as John had described. After a few minutes on the phone with John trying to pin point it down… he asked where I was.  After telling him the 4Bears Casino, he quickly hangs up.  A few minutes later I get a call from another local number.  

It is a friend of John’s named Keith Bear.  Mr Bear is a Mandan tribal elder who offers to meet me and show me around the area. (Just for the record, Mr Bear is also part Sioux and Hidatsa.) After a few minute phone conversation, we meet up at the museum… and basically hung out the next two days.

After talking and telling stories through the tribal museum till it closed we went to the earth lodge reconstructions, more stories… As it turned out he had been in the 82nd Airborne.  We talked about Vietnam, Afghanistan, flying helicopters, jumping out of helicopters, Ospreys… as well as the usual, women, the river, music, art, dams, and even got in discussions about fish.

SIDE DISCUSSION 1:  Dams, (so far I haven’t met anyone who likes them yet!) So, the Mandan were traditionally farmers with permanent towns built along the river.  The river bottom land being the best farming areas, they had their towns along the river for hundreds of years… maybe thousands. It is where their houses are, where their family members are buried, the sacred places…  Culturally where everything had happened for centuries. Then they build the dam, and not only are they flooding a third of the reservation by area, but the area that got flooded was exactly the area for farming and where all the towns and culturally significant places.  

To put this in perspective… lets say Germany had won WW2.  They own France… and have for 70 years now.  The French get to live in a big section in the middle on a French reservation.  Luckily for them it includes Paris!  But about seventy years after the the French end up on the reservation at “Fort Paris,” (which is roughly the same timeline as onto the reservation in the late 1800’s to the 1940/50s when the dam was built,)  The Germans decide to build a dam on the Seine… that floods Paris and also all the vineyards in central France.  So to put this in perspective… The Americans building this dam in the 40’s and 50s would be like if Germany had won WW2 and was flooding Paris and all the french vineyards today.  

Anyways, back to the story!  So, of course we eventually end up talking about Lewis and Clark.  So L&C coming through was certainly a noted even for the Mandan, and it was kind of mind blowing to hear it from his perspective.  The families that were here when they came through are still the families that are still here now.  As in, just down the street are the great great… grand kids of the guy who had Sakakawea and married her off to Charbonneau. Families still have the Pease Medals that L&C passed out have been passed down through the families… Sort of you might have a pocket watch from your great great grandfather who worked on trains in the 1800s or a linen handkerchief that was brought from Ireland when your family immigrated and has been passed down.  

SIDE DISCUSSION 2: Sakakawea VS Sacagawea.  Living in the world outside of North Dakota, I had always heard the name of the woman who traveled with L&C as “Sacagawea.” Pronounced like ‘sack-a-ja-wee-a.’  In North Dakota, her name is spelled Sakakawea. Pronounced, ‘Sa-kak-a-wA-a.’  Not really being a man of spelling, I didn’t think all that much about it except that those are two obviously differently pronounced words.  (unlike Two, too, to or I’ll even give you here, ear, and year… as pretty much the same sounding words.) But a K and a “J” sound are not even in the same boat.  Well, after talking to some speakers of Hidatsa, I am now solidly with North Dakota on the spelling and pronunciation.  Here is the discussion as presented by the actual speakers. “Sakakawea means Bird Woman in Hidatsa. (Her known name with the Hidatsa.) Sacagawea… this is baby talk or something.  It isn’t words, it makes no sense.”  So.  Sakakawea it is.  Tell your friends.

This has already become a long post, but let me end with another fish story. So, one of the stories Mr Bear tells me was about some divers that went down under the 4 Bears casino.  He told me that the first set of divers came up after working some intake down there... and they refused to go back saying, "There are things down there... no one would swim here ever if they saw what we saw!"  So, they got another bunch to go work.  After one day, they came up and refused to go down again... saying the same thing.  They got a third set of divers who finished the work... but one of them talked about being bumped in the back by what he though was a submerged log, but when he turned around to push it away the log had an eye the size of a hub cap and was looking at him.

Well, lets keep this in perspective.  I am talking to literally a professional story teller, and he is literally telling me a fish story!  So... I say, "Dude!!!! No way!  There is no way there are fish in this lake that are so huge that they have eyes the size of hubcaps!"

His only response was, "yep... white men never believe our stories until they do..." This was all a good natured exchange, but come on... eyes the size of hubcaps? :-/

So... the second day out of New Town.  I sailed into a little cove to spend the night. I dropped anchor about ten feet from shore, and the anchor went down at least 40 feet before it hit bottom. Well, with that deep of water, I only had about ten feel of slack, and that isn't enough slack to hold me so I pulled up the anchor, ran the bow onto the beach and set up for the night. (Read that as... it was at least 40 feet deep only ten feet from shore!)  I sat there writing this... and as usual in the evening, fish started jumping.  If you have ever sat out in the wild completely still and quite for a few hours, it is like the animals and plants forget you are there and just start doing their thing. There was a beaver swimming around behind the boat.  I could hear the coyote talking to each other just a few feet away on the bank... and I looked up at a little fish jumping.  Then just after a little sploosh of a little fish jumping... SOMETHING surfaced.  I only saw the top of it's head and then the arch of it's back.  It's body just kept arching.  It had to be about a foot in diameter at least and it was like it's body never ended.  Now, I don't think it had an eye the size of a hubcap, but it was some giant predator fish of some sort!  Involuntarily out of my mouth came the words, "OH MY GOD!"  I didn't mean to say it... it was like my body just said it on it's own.  

And, now... I will never swim in Sakakawea.