Flying the
Lewis and Clark Trail
Up the Missouri River to Montana

 
  


 
Air trip by Presley Melton and Ellis Melton
April 26-May 2, 2004
Ellis and Presley having fun at 9500 feet, although most of the flight legs were  much lower when possible ... about 1500 feet off the ground for good sightseeing.   The pilot  is the one in the cool pilot shades. North of Cody, Wyoming.   After leaving the Missouri river at Great Falls we flew over some rugged "foothills" of the Rockies as we headed back to Arkansas.  Lake Fort Peck in Montana was built in the late 1930's by the Corp of Engineers, who erected a dam on the Missouri River and built an entire town nearby for the workers.  We stopped for the night in nearby Glasgow, Montana, and drove out to the lake and the ghost town of Fort Peck.
We flew over "Badlands" for much of the trip.  These pictures  happen to be on both sides of the river in North Dakota.  Sometimes the river was wild (above right, and also top of page) and other times it was actually a lake (such as part of Lake Fort Peck, above) formed by a number of man-made dams.