Good Morning Campers!
On the way to Little Big Horn, I stopped at the Headwaters of the Missouri State Park in Three Forks, MT.
The headwaters of a river is usually a small trickle of water in the mountains or a spring or even from a lake. The Missouri is formed from the confluence of 3 rivers. Lewis and Clark were traveling from the Mississippi up the Missouri and came to this confluence of rivers and decided that none of them were the Missouri and named them the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin after the President (Jefferson), Secretary of State (Madison) and the Secretary of the Treasury (Gallatin).
The first picture above are the where the Jefferson and Madison come together in the rough form of a "C". The tall trees in the middle of the C is where the Corps of Discovery camped. The second picture gives the details of where to find the confluence of the three rivers.
The coordinates plaque is on a rocky outcropping looking towards the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison. The Gallatin enters the Jefferson 0.6 miles upstream. The USGS considers the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison rivers to be the headwaters of the Missouri River. Would the government lie to us? Later on in my journey, when we get to St. Louis, we will see the end of the Missouri or the start of the Lewis and Clark expedition, where the Missouri empties into the Mississippi river.
The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers are about the same length today. If either of the three rivers were considered the Missouri, then it would be longer than the Mississippi. Maybe the Mississippi River has a better lobbyist.
On the way to the rock outcropping to get a better view of the new Missouri River I came across 2 interesting items - 1 flower and 1 fauna. First the flower - cactus. There were quite a few groupings of cactus. Some totally dried out and apparently dead and some, like in the picture, alive and apparently well. The largest cactus plant was about 3 inches tall. They appeared to be growing as many had red growth nodules on them. But many of their kin do not survive the winter. An interesting conundrum - if the winter kills them, how are they multiplying and growing in so many different spots in the park?
The interesting fauna were a mother and young Yellow Bellied Marmot. The Park Attendant said they make a whistling sound but I was not able to coax that out of them. The mother was definitely more cautious than the young one. However, she did allow her young to stay out of their rocky home to investigate me. I guess she was training it to become more aware of people since that there are so many visitors to this part of the park as it is the highest point one can get to in the park to see the rivers. The attendant also mentioned that there a family of bull snakes that live at the out cropping as well, but I did not see any snakes unfortunately.
The weather was nice this day and the bridge is out along the main road so there was a detour of a couple of miles to get around the missing bridge. This had been the first day not really threatening rain so the top was down and I was driving through the usual beautiful Montana country.
On to Little Big Horn.
Michael
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