I was lazy this morning, rising late and doing some leisurely writing before a late breakfast.  I managed to get myself checked out before they kicked me out, but only just!  Then I wandered over to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center overlooking the Missouri River and spent a delightful time reviewing the details of their epic journey.  What a fantastic museum. 

In the afternoon, I drove down the incredibly scenic I15S from Great Falls to Helena, pausing at the Gates to the Mountains -- so named by Lewis and Clark -- to take a scenic boat tour and learn about the rugged canyon through which the intrepid explorers came.  Limestone walls loomed over us, and I saw a bald eagle hunting and mule deer grazing, and at the rest stop at an isolated camping site, there were recent signs of a large bear who must have slipped out of sight right about the time the boat was docking. 

The canyon was also the site of a terrible box canyon fire that killed a number of smoke jumpers back in 1949.  What was learned from that fire revolutionized the way forest fires were fought in future, but it came too late to save the men who perished that day.  Apparently, the fire jumped the canyon and came roaring up the side where the men had landed.  It was a massive wall of flame.  One man lit a small counter fire and laid himself down among the ashes.  The forest fire went around his burnt out area and his life was saved.  The only others who made it out alive and relatively unscathed were two rookie jumpers who got on a rock slide with little fuel to burn and ran back and forth until the fire had passed. 

I finished the scenic drive to Helena and settled into my hotel after a nice, relaxing drive around town to view the Capital building and the historic downtown area.  Helena was once a booming mine town, and you can still see some of that in the name of the roads, such as Last Chance Gulch.  According to the story, Helena was inadvertently started by 4 Georgian gold hunters who stumbled into the area after many fruitless months of searching for the fabled ore.  On July 14th, 1864, the men decided to take "one last chance" looking for gold.  They started panning for gold in the nearby creek, and they found it that very night.    So they named the stream Last Chance Gulch, and Helena quickly became a boom town.  originally, the town was called Crabtown after one of the Georgia boys who founded her, but soon it became Saint Helena and was eventually shortened to Helena.  A great town, and now capital of Montana.